Mahu Vice Read Free

began his landscaping business, and he still treated it as a jewel. Fearing my father’s disapproval might have had something to do with it, too.
    Tico, who is also my sister-in-law Tatiana’s best friend, embraced me like a long-lost relative. “Kimo, it’s been so long!” He looked at me front and back. I knew I’d let my hair get shaggy, and my normal tan was just starting to come back. “You are here just in time. I think if I work my magic I just might save your looks.”
    He leaned close. “Though you know, the closer you get to forty, the more you have to work to keep them.”
    “Forty!” I squawked. Tico was at least ten years older than I was, if not fifteen. “I’m not even thirty-five yet.”
    “And you want the boys to know that,” he said. “So you have to take care of your hair and your skin.”
    “I leave myself in your capable hands.”
    He led me past a row of old-fashioned hair dryers he loved because they reminded him of an I Love Lucy episode. The salon was filled with stuff like that—lavish murals, painted by a former lover; postcards of Puerto Rico, Tico’s home island; and a collection of Barbie dolls with extravagant hairdos, bought for him by clients every Christmas. When I walked in, Bruddah Norm was singing on the CD player about his Hawaiian-Samoan heritage, and I couldn’t help swaying to the beat.
    Tico sat me down in a chair and motioned a boy over to me. “Jingtao will wash your hair,” he said. He made some hand signals to the boy, which led me to believe he didn’t speak much English, and then the boy turned me around in the chair and gently pressed down on my shoulders, lowering my head to the sink.
    I rested my neck on the porcelain indent, closed my eyes, and tried to relax. I’d been working like a madman since the surfing expedition, trying to make up for my previous slacker attitude.
    My boss, Lieutenant Sampson, hadn’t said anything to me in my low period, but now he’d begun lavishing praise on me, as if recognizing that I needed some extra pushing to make it back up from my depths. I’d closed out three homicides that week, all as the result of dogged police work, and I was feeling good.
    Jingtao’s long, slender fingers massaged my scalp, first with shampoo, then conditioner, and I wondered how a boy—and he couldn’t be more than sixteen—who couldn’t speak English ended up shampooing at a hair salon. When I moved to Tico’s chair for my cut, I asked.
    “I found him in the back alley,” Tico said, leaning close to my ear. The back of the center faced a narrow alley. “He was scared of his own shadow. I coaxed him inside, cleaned him up, and let him sleep in the back room.”
    “Doesn’t he have family?”
    “Not that I know of. There’s a Chinese girl at the travel agency next door, and all he’d tell her was that he’d run away from somewhere.”
    “You should call social services. They can find out what’s going on.”
    “In a few days,” Tico said. “I gave him a safe place to sleep, I feed him every day, and he collects a few bucks in tips. He’s safe enough, for now.”
    He began to snip at my head, and black hair fell around me. “Now let me work my magic, young man. You need some help here.”
    I relaxed to Bruddah Norm’s island beat as Tico cut, and when I left the salon I felt handsome. I’ve been lucky enough to get the best genes from my Hawaiian, Japanese, and haole grandparents: a light olive skin, a slight epicanthic fold over my eyes, and thick dark hair. I have worked my body for years through surfing, rollerblading, bicycling, and other sports. I’d put on a few extra pounds in the past year, maybe the beginning of a pot belly, but I’d been working it off with a fresh round of exercise.
    Gunter came over that night to help me pick out the right clothes to wear for my date. I’m no fashion bug; if it was up to me, I’d wear aloha shirts, board shorts, and rubber slippas every day of the year. I sprawled on my