Kanani slowed her pace. “Follow close,” she whispered and led Lett and her bicycle to a clearing on the inland side. A faded sign read KAPU. She flashed her lighter around. The clearing held a clapboard bungalow, a chicken coop, two old cars sinking into the ground, a stone barbecue, and various chairs and tables that had been tossed about during the storms. Palm trees and tall bushes leaned into the clearing, swaying and shimmying, the branches and leaves drooping and dripping and feeding, below them, the many giant ferns and shrubs of budding red flowers. It was just the sort of dead-end yard Lett would never have entered alone on patrol. Too much had to be checked out.

Kanani took the bicycle from him and walked it into the middle of the clearing. He halted close to a tree, his fingers clamping the wet bark. “Is someone home?” he whispered.

“Just us,” she whispered back.

“What does kapu mean?”

“Taboo. No trespass. But we’re okay.”

Lett detached himself from the tree and tiptoed toward her. She leaned the bicycle up against the few front steps of the bungalow and climbed them on tiptoes. He stood down below, staring up at her.

“Why we still whispering?” she said, adding a giggle.

“Hell if I know.”

She let her hands slap at her sides. She stepped back down and stood on the bottom step, eye-to-eye with him. “You’re really aching, aren’t you?”

He nodded. She reached out and touched his chin. He let her, watched her, his mouth open. He smiled. What a dummy. Say something. She opened her mouth and her teeth glistened again in the dark. It made him look down, at her brown legs, just a glance. She noticed, of course. And she said, from deep within her compact little chest, “Okay den. Are you coming, army guy, or you going?”

***

Lett heard her but couldn’t answer. His throat had tightened up from gasping, from screaming inside and nothing coming out, and his eyeballs burned.

“You had a nightmare,” Kanani repeated in the dark, her voice thin from sleep.

It was the middle of the night. They each had a quilted mattress on the floor of the bungalow, taking up most of the sparse bedroom. The bed quilts were a Japanese roll-up she called a futon. He’d kept on his GI-issue olive drab boxers and singlet. Kanani had given him a thin sheet for a cover. She had on a simple white nightgown, no sheet. He had tried not to look at her like that and was grateful there was no moonlight. They’d had a belt of rum, and the day caught up with them. Dead tired, they had gone right to sleep.