How to make friends
An hour later a Cadillac floats in. Not in the best condition, but with lots of room for all our luggage on the back seat. The trunk is already full of dirty linen. John, the owner of this monster of a car, is blond, badly in need of a shave, a real nice man and the owner of a cellular phone. It had been ringing an hour ago, next to the swimming pool where John was planning to spend his weekend.
At the very last minute - the children had already called and asked what is keeping Mama so long - Madame had remembered that she would be able to provide a car on Monday. Not only one car - no, at least ten. Out of the contingent of the travel agency where she normally worked, Monday through Friday. Oui, oui - every travel agency has its contingent of cars. No problem. You just have to stay somewhere until Monday.
Maybe in a hotel? "Mais non, Monsieur! I told you - we 'ave a convention! There are no rooms in 'onolulu!"
For a friend there is always a place. And, of course, for friends of friends too. And since we are, you guessed it, the new friends of Madame, John is coming now and picking us up. He lives a tiny little bit away from Honolulu, about 35 miles, on the northwest end of Oahu, where the surfers wait for the real big waves.
John does not only have a room - he has complete apartments, not only one, no, he has several of them, and we could not only rent them. We could buy them, if we so wished. Week by week; they call this system "time-sharing", and in principle it is a gigantic but completely legal scam. You buy an apartment for the best weeks of the year, have a nice holiday there and rent it out for the rest of your alloted time. This produces so much income that you can easily finance your apartment. In the end you have a holiday, acquire property, get rich quick and even save taxes. Wow!
John gives this theory lesson during the drive which takes about an hour. Dutifully he lists all the advantages. But he doesn't really believe what he says. How could he; after all he lives there.
And how he lives! A two meter high barbed wire fence, safety patrols, a closed gate and a guard room, an overweight private sheriff with a loaded .45 on his belt, barrier across the street and a scrupulous check to be sure if John is a registered resident. He writes our names in his guard book: visiting friends. Then we are allowed in.
A winding road leads to a multi-storey car park. It is too dark, too narrow, too low, like all car parks. Why don't architects ever listen to their wives?
This architect's wife must have run away. He must have planned the whole housing area in a state of deep depression, mixed with outbursts of rage at mankind in general. His creation is of merciless hideousness: shoe boxes made from concrete, hundredfold piled up side by side and threefold on top of each other, painted with cheap yellow and pink paint. As we walk the endless balconies we are tuned to the holiday atmosphere of this place. Out of the half open hatches come the more intimate sounds of people in the shower or on the toilet. TV blasting everywhere. Someone is frying something smelly in old fat. Where, for heavens sake, have we arrived?
Our apartment is fully furnished. Even the garbage can is full. In the small closet in the bathroom we find all kinds of things which other people have used and then hadn't the heart or the time to throw away. The fridge is not very clean, but at least it's empty. The bed seems to have fresh sheets. Otherwise I would have thought that John rents out other people's apartments who are away just for the weekend.
"Why don't you give me the 98 Dollars we agreed upon?" asks John as soon as we have opened the balcony door and taken a deep breath. "Why, sure!" I cry and fish for my credit card. But - no plastics. John wants cash. Yes, Mr. Taxman, I know. I would have loved to get a regular bill for a regular room in a regular hotel - but... living ain't easy in paradise.
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