The Night Marchers

Every Hawaiian has heard of the “Marchers of the Night,” Ka huaka`i o ka Po. A few have seen the procession. It is said that such sight is fatal unless one had a relative among the dead to intercede for him. If a man is found stricken by the roadside, a white doctor will pronounce the cause as heart failure, but a Hawaiian will think at once of the fatal night march.

The streets of Chinatown were filthy with ghosts.

The second I stepped out of the blissfully air-conditioned cab, into the wet and sultry night air filled with a hundred perfumes, reaching back into the cab to help my little sister out of it, I could feel them. Minute tendrils of slow, icy seduction, seeping through the soupy air and into my flesh, letting me know they were there, but refusing to show themselves.

“Shall we dance?” I inquired of her, taking her fur-lined jacket to hold because of the sultry heat. “Ready to exorcise some demons?”

“Let’s do it,” she said confidently, brandishing her camera. “Let’s go.”

We sauntered along the Chinatown streets for several minutes, sounds and scents assaulting me along the way. We stopped along the way to remark to each other certain points of our past, e.g., “I remember,” pointing downward, “slipping on these cobblestones.” “I remember,” pointing through a closed gate, “I remember…”

I saw the closed and locked gates open inward just as I saw a beam of light from above, like a pin light on a stage, or like the beams from an early Sabbath morning sun, illuminate the courtyard within. It shone down upon a particular table in the courtyard, upon a blond man, laughing, sipping his coffee, and upon a Japanese man, delicately eating a breakfast of rice, egg, and sausages with hashi.

Suddenly, all of the darkness, all of the sounds from the karaoke shack and whatnot in the middle of the First Friday Chinatown streets, receded, and all I could see were these two men, dining, blissfully unaware of my presence, on an early Sunday morning breakfast.

(Somehow, I just knew that they had walked here holding hands, unashamedly, in the stark early morning Sunday light, for all of what was left of the week of Downtown Honolulu to see.)

I saw them laugh. I saw the Japanese man reach across the table to pluck an errant grain of rice from the blond man’s lip, and devour it himself. I saw the blond man wax nostalgic as he heard a certain Mandarin tune swell forth from the marketplace speakers.

The blond man put his hand on the Japanese man’s hand, on the table, and threw his head back in happy laughter at something the Japanese man had said, and rolled his head almost lasciviously to the side to meet my eyes.

“I have him,” his emerald gaze told me. “And you do not.”

I watched, as the blond man smiled at me sideways and drew up to meet the Japanese man’s gaze, as he lit a single post-brunch cigarette for them to share intimately in the middle of Chinatown.

“Atherton? Hon?” my little sister inquired of me.

“Yes! Darling!” I exclaimed, shaking myself out of my reverie. “I’m here. Where to now?”

And we walked away, down Maunakea, arm in arm, she snapping photographs of her memories, and me still reliving mine.

“And here is where,” she said to me, gesturing vociferously toward the sidewalk and the crosswalk. But I was in another world, pin light already trained on the red brick wall of a building across the street, forcing the darkness of the First Friday evening to fade, replacing it with the warmth of a weekday morning in Chinatown, and the coolness of the lips on a blond man’s lips, slim hips against slim hips, large bag of cherries nearly squished between two bony sternums, soft mist pelting them from above.

The blond man again, mocking me, his white hand enviously visible clutching the strong back muscles of the Chinese Okinawan man who was pinning him to the wall in the rain. I could just make out the words on the blond man’s lips as he pulled the other man to him. “I’m here. I’m here. I’m here.”

And I died a little.

I could hear the beginnings of a late ’90s tune as the Chinese Okinawan man helped the blond man into the passenger seat of the sensible Toyota sedan; could see just a glimpse of the mischievous green eyes above the white paint of the vehicle’s roof, dancing back at me.

The pin light narrowed on those eyes, and disappeared, as I heard my little sister say, “What, hon?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Now who wants to see the newly renovated Hawaii Theatre?”

“I do!” she replied, happily, taking my arm as we walked the walk.

We stopped to take photographs of bright lights in the big city, of street taggers tagging white buildings with laser pointers, of our previous lives, of our previous ghosts, splayed out before us.

“How weird is it,” she stopped to inquire, on the corner of Bethel and Pauahi, “that I don’t think that I have any demons to exorcise anymore?”

I paused momentarily. Looked away. And back again. Tried to forget the ghosts I had just seen. And said, “Not weird, at all, my dear. I feel exactly the same way.”

We pressed forward through the crowd on Bethel. I won’t tell you what happened there, or what happened inside and outside of Du Vin. I will only write that at the end of it all my little sister turned to me and queried, “How long was that? Like, how much time elapsed between me saying that I didn’t have any demons to exorcise anymore and him just POPPING OUT OF NOWHERE?!”

“Three minutes,” I said, lighting a cigarette.

We walked the streets, cool tendrils of the ghosts of earlier in the evening still tickling my spine, until we reached what used to be Studio 1.

Suddenly, the lights of the bygone gallery were all live, and focused on a beautifully coiffed maven in a cellophane dress being escorted into the gallery by a blond man in a gray suit. The blond man looked back at me, winked, and proceeded.

“Blogging at little sister’s apartment?” I heard my little sister ask me. “It’s so early, but I don’t want to be here anymore.”

“Yes,” I said. “That sounds perfect.”

And we started out to reach The 1088 and a cab, as we had always done before. She mentioned calling her little sister, and I turned around to tell her something, but also to catch a final glimpse of the us from years before entering Studio 1.

I saw the cellophane dress and the gray suit enter the gallery.

I saw the smiles on their faces, the wry grin thrown my way by the blond man, amidst all of the house music being played by a certain DJ that weekend.

And suddenly, they disappeared.

And I saw a cab barreling toward us in the middle of the street.

And that was when my little sister got hit by a cab.