Naked Portraits Pt 07

Notes from the author:

Hello Literotica reader and welcome to Part 7. Part six was the smallest installment and a bit off the beaten track. My editor, Boston, advised me to leave it out because he thought that it didn't add to Gwen's narrative. But there were so many notes from her dream sessions on the flash drive that I felt that I couldn't ignore it so I left it in. To be honest, I grew attached to the scene because Gwen's actual voice appeared on the drive that one and only time. Anyway, in part 7, we return to the flow of Gwen Yoshimura's life in the company of the beautify and mysterious Meka Okuda. Enjoy.

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Chapter 40 A Sign From the Goddess

"Why do we need to be up so early?" I whined in the passenger seat of Meka Okuda's green Volvo. The traffic was light, in fact it felt like we were the only car on Hawaii Inter State one which was kind of surreal.

"Because, you lazy ass artist," Meka said, "it's gonna take us most the day to get to the photo site. If you like, I can turn around and take you back to Waikiki?"

"Can't. I've already spent the money you gave me on drugs and cheap man whores. And besides both my lovers picked this weekend to be out of town."

"Good. That poor pussy of yours could use the rest," Meka said.

I gave her the finger

"Can we get a cup of coffee at the airport to jump start my brain please?" I asked in the most whinny annoying voice I could conjure.

"No time, we'll get some on Maui," Meka answered sounding like an annoyed parent.

"They'll serve coffee on the plane," I reasoned totally cranky and discontented.

A week ago Meka had approached me to help in another photo shoot. Aside from my meager work study checks and selling my brain to the psych department, I was always short on cash. Art supplies are expensive here in the islands and sadly, not having a rich best friend like Betty anymore put a serious kink on my cash flow. So naturally, I jumped all over Meka's offer. It blew my mind when the crazy chick handed me a thousand dollars in cash seconds after I said yes to her offer of work.

"Going rate for an assistant," she told me with a small smile. "My regular guy can't make it so you'll have to do."

Meka never found out about my naked underwater shots with Li. If she had, I'm sure she wouldn't have hired me for this second gig. Weirdly, it was the Goth lesbian princess, Deidre Kahakaloha Smith that had come to my rescue. Deirdre was the one responsible for making the proof sheets for the Li photo shoot and she told me she had deleted my shots on the the digital card. I suspect she had done did it as a favor for LI and not for me. And I also suspect that Deidre had made a few prints for Li before the deletions. I prayed that the Tanaka guy never found out. I would hate to be the one responsible for Deidre losing a good paying gig.

After the airport exit, Meka took a side road that followed the edge of the tarmac. Five minutes later, we pulled into an airfield lined with small aircraft.

"This is why my regular guy wasn't available," Meka said. "I couldn't get him into one of these little planes. He calls them deathtraps. You up for flying in a deathtrap?"

"Danger is my middle name. Do they serve coffee here?" I asked looking around but saw nothing that looked like a coffee shop, not even a manapua truck.

"No coffee. And lolo is your middle name."

As Meka and I unloaded the Volvo of baggage and equipment, a beat up pickup truck pulled up alongside us.

"That's Teddy, Our pilot" Meka said.

"Really?" I said giving the ugly pick up a dubious look.

"Don't worry, he's a good pilot," Meka assured me.

"If he's so good why does he drive such a shitty truck? Doesn't he make enough money flying?" I asked a bit disturbed at how much I sounded like my grandmother.

"Stop being so Japanese," Meka said.

"No can help. Born this way."

"Hey Teddy," Meka cheerfully greeted the middle aged local guy giving him a friendly hug. He was on the chubby side perhaps one meal away from being officially fat. The guy's rumpled appearance and unshaven face begged for a urine test.

"Hey Meka," Teddy said. He pulled a large silver thermos out of the storage bin on the back of his ugly truck. "I brought coffee." Along with the coffee he produced a cardboard box with paper cups, sugar packets, creamer packets and plastic spoons. My opinion of the guy did a one-eighty.

"This is Gwen and I think you just made a friend for life Teddy," Meka said.

We poured and dressed our coffees on the tailgate of Teddy's BEAUTIFUL truck. With coffees in hand, he led us to a sleek looking red and white aircraft parked on the small airfield among the other airplanes. He told us what the airplane was called and rattled off its specks. The thing seemed too small to be taken seriously. A twinge of doubt seized me effectively evaporating my earlier bravado. The word deathtrap didn't seem so funny now. Teddy helped us load equipment and luggage into the two cargo bins on either side of the plane.

"I get shotgun," Meka said.

She got no argument from me; the less I could see out the better I thought. I squeezed into one of the two seats in the back and immediately buckled up. I wondered stupidly if airplanes came with crash airbags.

"So how long have you been flying," I asked Teddy trying to sound conversational.

"Two weeks from this Tuesday," he said.

I blanched and squeak out a tiny sound of distress.

Meka slapped Teddy's arm and said, "He did this to me too when we first flew together. He thinks it's funny. He's been flying for years."

"Aw, ruin the fun," Teddy said with a smile.

I considered smacking him too.

Teddy put on a headset and then did a series of checks. Satisfied with his checks, he pressed a button to start the plane. The two prop engines on the wings kicked in simultaneously with no coughing or hitching.

Thank goodness! I almost screamed aloud.

After another series of checks, Teddy rolled the tiny craft out onto the runway. He said a few words into his headset, the engines revved higher, we raced down the runway, and then lifted magically into the air seconds later.

"I logged a flight path over the Wailuku side of the West Maui Mountains, "Teddy informed us in a loud voice to be heard over the drone of the engines. "Then we fly over the Maalaea Boat Harbor then follow the Pali Highway coast to Lahaina. Az longer flight but mo' scenic."

It was still dark when we lifted off but the sun came up minutes after we were over the ocean. It was a cloudless day and soon, the island of Molokai was beneath us with Lanai a little further down on our right. The Island of Kahoolawe was a blue-gray smear even further out. With Maui in sight, we took a right turn. We flew over the neck of land that divided Maui's two mountain ranges. Maui's two major cities were located on the neck, Wailuku and Kahului. Teddy flew as low as he was allowed and we could see the craggy details of the West Maui Mountains. The sun topped the Haleakala Crater bathing everything in golden orange light. As we flew over the mountains on our right. I could make out the intensely green Iao Valley rainforest. I though of my forest goddess and whispered a quiet greeting to her and then prayed for a safe landing for good measure.

The plane banked away from the mountains and flew over homes and then vast sugarcane fields. A few minuets later the crowded Maalaea boat harbor was beneath us briefly and then shrunk behind us as we moved over open water. To our left, the island of Kaoolawi dominated the horizon, to the right the red brown drier side of the West Maui Mountains were in sharp view. We flew over Olowalu a favorite spot for surfers Hawk once told me. Even at this early hour I could see the tiny specks of surfboards in the water. The Pali Highway, carved into the side of the mountain years ago, weaved below crammed with cars from the morning rush hour. From our height, the cars seemed to move in slow motion. In a few minutes Lahaina town came into view. A menagerie of ships and boats peppered the waters off shore, a denser concentration of boats and ships filled the Lahaina harbor.

As Lahaina town thinned the Kaanapali resort area came into view. Several large hotels hugged the coast all connected by a long stretch of pale sand and a seemingly endless bright green golf course. The plane turned inland heading to the microscopic Kapalua West Maui Airport. I checked my seat belt and braced myself for a jolt as the plane rapidly descended. No jolt came though as the plane kissed down with barely a squeak from the tires. We taxied for a minuet then came to a stop near a cluster of squat buildings surrounded by other small aircraft. Teddy killed the engines.

"Welcome to Lahaina the most beautiful town in the world, " Teddy said.

"To you Lahaina boys maybe," Meka said. "This place too hot."

"Because you big city Kahului girls weak az why," Teddy said.

I smiled at the banter. I grew up in the sprawl of Honolulu and Waikiki. Calling Kahului, a big city was a stretch to my opinion.

We offloaded our bags from the tiny plane and went into the little terminal building. As Teddy busied himself filling out aviation paper work, Meka went to retrieve the keys for her Avis rental car faithfully waiting for us out in the parking lot. It was perhaps the world's ugliest gray Colt hatchback in all the islands.

"Couldn't you afford a nicer car?"

Meka laughed and said in local pidgin, "Some critical, you." We loaded the ugly thing with our bags and equipment. "I specifically requested this car for two reasons. First, with the backseat folded down it will hold all of my equipment, and second, it doesn't scream RENTAL! PLEASE BREAK IN AND STEAL MY STUFF!"

At the highway, Meka turned left toward Lahaina town and flowed into the mid morning traffic. A little past town, the traffic thinned and soon we were at the old Lahaina tunnel with the year 1921 carved over the entrance. A couple of hundred yards after the tunnel, Meka steered the rental onto the shoulder of the highway and then onto a bumpy dirt road that took us around a crumbly outcropping of red rock. On the passenger's side of the car, the Hawaiian word Pali, meaning cliff, lived up to its name by dropping straight down to the churning rocky shore a hundred or more feet below.

Meka rolled the ugly rental to a stop.

"You better get out on my side," she said.

She got no argument from me as I crawled over the gearshift and slipped out the driver's door. We unloaded two heavy gym bags, a full backpack and a small drink cooler. Meka put on the backpack then slung one of the gym bags over her shoulder, I took the other gym bag and we carried the cooler between us. After a few yards, the path narrowed growing steep and rough. Rocky walls closed in on either side of us. The path ended at a sheer drop with a view of the unnaturally blue Pacific Ocean a long ways below. We dropped our loads then took turns looking over the edge at a calm rocky cove far below. Even from this height I could see colorful reef fish lazily swing in the shallows of the blue-green water.

"It's beautiful," I said.

"A local fisherman told me about this place a couple of years back," Meka said. "I've been aching to do a photo shoot here ever since." She got out her camera and took a few photos of the cove below and of the narrow path we used to get here. We hefted our bags and the cooler and worked our way back to a path that looped around to a not so sheer rocky drop off. We dropped the bags and cooler to look down the rocky slope, tufts of grass poked out here and there.

"I'm told that a couple of feet down is a nylon rope anchored into the cliff wall at intervals for easy accessibility," Meka said. She adjusted her backpack, tested the rocky ground for footing and then she gingerly stepped down sideways." Found the rope," she said. She came back up, shouldered a gym bag and started down. I shouldered the other gym bag and we dragged more than carried the cooler between us.

"Who's idea of accessible is this?" I complained as we worked our way down.

The loaded gym bag on my shoulder kept threatening to topple me over. Thankfully, the thick rope anchored to the cliff side was knotted every couple of feet for easy gripping. Fifteen heart pounding minutes later; the rope gave out onto a rocky ledge. I dropped my load and stood next to Meka. Breathing hard, we gawked at a fifty-yard stretch of pale creamy sand in the shape of a crescent moon that was not visible from up top. It was like something out of a pirate movie.

"It's too perfect to be real," I said.

"Bet it took a million years for the sea to carve out this little scene." Meka said.

A strange feeling rippled through me ... I've seen this place before, but I quickly dismissed the feeling for I was positive I had never been her before in my life.

Meka climbed down the last six feet or so to the sand. I lowered the cooler then the bags to her. I stood on the rock for a few seconds looking at the idyllic beach with its odd rock overhang that created a perfect patch of shade. Then I had it, the little painting Paul Gleason had brought at Ala Moana beach Park. The artist must have stood on this very rock to do the painting or at leased worked from a photo taken from this spot. This was so odd ... and kind of spooky.

"You coming down skinny jeans?" Meka asked from below.

I snapped out of my weird moment and climbed down the rock. We stood on the pristine white sand totally void of footprints. The isolation felt delicious. I said, "We could get totally naked and walk about without the world knowing."

Meka laughed. "As hard as it is for you, please keep your panties on. I have no desire to see your skinny little ass."

I gave her the finger and then for no reason, Meka and I dashed down the length of the beach whooping like idiots.

A little out of breath, we stashed the bags and the cooler of drinks in the shade under the rock overhang. Meka fumbled around in her backpack and pulled out two sturdy black trash bags and handed one to me.

"We pay tribute to the gods," she said. "Pick up any human trash that the sea may have brought in."

I nodded for it was a fair price to pay for this unexpected beauty. With trash bags in hand, Meka and I combed opposite ends of the beach for human debris. I found bits of broken plastic, an aluminum soda can, some fishing line. As I picked up a piece of waste paper, my eyes caught a glint of an object in the sand. Thinking it was a bottle I dropped to my knees to carefully dig it up in case it was broken. The object was made of glass alright, but it wasn't a bottle. It was a greenish translucent glass globe about the size of a grapefruit.

"I found a net float!" I called out excited.

Holding her trash bag and an aluminum can, Meka walked over to see. "It must really be old," she said. "They hardly make them of glass anymore." Meka took the thing into her hands and spun it. Half of the glass was speckled with dead white barnacles forming a rough X on one side. "This one's Chinese." Meka showed me an embossed symbol at the bottom of the float. "That's the Chinese character for the ocean goddess Li, the chosen goddess of fishermen in certain parts of China, Taiwan and South Indochina. She brings good luck."

In my mind's eye, I saw the naked bluish-white form of Li Hong floating before me. Li goddess of the sea ... The name fit her well I thought.

"Enough appeasement to pagan gods, I want a soda," Meka said. I followed her to the cooler in the shade of the overhang.

We knotted up our trash bags and then drank our sodas sitting in the shade of the overhang taking in the tiny lagoon enclosed by towering rocks. An occasional loud roar of waves breaking on the other side of the lagoon's protective ring was the only sound that met our ears.

"To hell with the Honolulu rat race," I said. "We'll live here forever, naked and free, eating fish and coconuts that wash in on the waves."

"Na, I'd miss Starbucks," Meka said seriously. After a sip of her soda she said, "I guess you've heard the news of Erma Beaumont's departure?"

I choked and spat out a mouth full of soda. "What news?"

"I though you knew, she being your mentor and all."

"I've been kind of avoiding her lately. What news?" My mind raced back to my impromptu pagan ritual a month ago. Although, I didn't believe any of it, a deeper primitive part of me did. With superstitious dread I thought, did I had given her cancer? A heart attack?

"She accepted a job offer as curator at a museum in San Francisco defecated to prominent female abstract painters throughout history. She leaves in January."

"Oh," I said stunned ... and relieved.

"All you have to do is get through this semester then you'll have a new adviser come January. Goodby modernism, hello quirky post-modern portraiture."

"Yeah," I said as mixed emotions flowed through me.

"You don't sound too excited."

"I'm scared shitless," I said, surprised that tears were flowing down my face. "Artistically, I'm totally lost. All my latest paintings seem impulsive, coming from a part of my brain that I can't get a grip on." I wiped at my eyes and let out a humorous laugh. I'm so desperate for some kind of fucking grip on my brain That I signed to a dream study at the psych department. Probably the only thing I'll get from that is proving that I'm crazy."

"I can save you the time," Meka said. "You one lolo bitch."

"Yeah, well, at least I get paid by the psych department for that fluttering assessment."

After a minuet of silence, Meka said softly, "Change doesn't come easy for us Japanese chicks huh?"

"Had too much of it lately is all." I turned the net float in my hands and wondered what the goddesses had in store for me.

Chapter 41 Cassie, Rudy and Harry

"My subjects are here," Meka said snapping me out of my mental hand wringing.

Three people stood on the ledge above the sand at the entrance to the cove, two men and one woman. Both men were Hawaiian and stood near a foot taller than the woman. The woman had an arm around the waist of one of the men and she wore a big floppy straw hat. Meka stood up, dusted sand from the butt of her jeans and then waved at the group. I wiped my face and eyes of tears and stood up too.

"Who are they?" I asked.

"The couple is Rudy and Cassie Kahakaloha. They own the Waikiki Sunset Gym.

"Hawk got me a membership there," I said. "Nice gym."

"The other guy is Harry Hoopii one of my regular models. The Kahakaloha's are paying for photos to put up in the lobby of their gym."

"Rudy Kahakaloha? Why do I know that name?" I asked as we walked toward the rock ledge.

"He was a big football star a few years ago at the university. The team road his back to a bowl birth in his senior year. An injury kept him from going pro."

The man standing with the woman wore a red tang top and loose denim shorts. He bent at the knees and jumped from the ledge landing in the sand in a graceful three point stand.

"That's Rudy," Meka said.

Rudy stood up. His beautifully sculpted arms, legs, chest and stomach were a testament to a serious work out regime. In fact, he looked the way a guy should look who owned a gym. His black long hair touched his shoulders and framed a rugged and handsome, dark brown Hawaiian face. He turned to catch bags the others on the ledge tossed down at him. I took the moment to admire his splendidly muscled back and tight ass.

Meka leaned in to me and whispered, "Roll up your tongue and stop drooling."

To be funny, I made an exaggerated swiped at my mouth.

"Jump baby, I'll catch you," Rudy Kahakaloha said to his wife on the ledge.

"You had better catch me or I'll kick your ass back to the airport, I tell you what," Cassie Kahakaloha said. She removed her straw hat and chucked it down. Her husband caught it and handed it to me. Cassie had a cute pixie face surrounded by short blond hair in a boyish bob cut. Her accent said southern continental United States. Shockingly, Cassie threw herself into the air and landed in a sitting position in her husbands waiting arms. Rudy flipped her into the air and with a theatrical twist; she landed in the sand one arm extended over her head and the other at her waist.