from “Tailspin”

Yukio and I arranged to meet at an open-air coffee bar two blocks from Honolulu Harbor. It was dusk, when pau-hana traffic filled the streets and lights etched their colors on the silver air. I spoke first.

“As I said on the phone, these three things happened around the same time: the Maui woman disappeared in L.A.; Trump was elected; and my cat went blind. All within a few days of each other.”

“I see.” He sounded dubious. “And the timing is what makes you think they’re connected.”

“They are connected. I don’t just think they’re connected.”

“Let’s start with the woman.”

“OK.”

“I followed here and there as the story was developing. Sometimes a headline but not the article. She was supposed to make a connecting flight on Nov. 8, but never boarded.”

“Yes. That’s the day she disappeared—though she was seen afterward.”

“Seen on surveillance camera, you mean. And she made a couple of Venmo transactions, apparently.”

“Yes, this is where it gets confusing. It seems that other people joined her, though she didn’t tell her family who they were. In one text message, she said that she had been tricked into giving money to someone she thought she loved. So the family was worried.”

“And the father, who went to look for her—”

“Earl, fifty-ish, Okinawan. He flew from Hawai‘i to L.A. after the family last heard from her, distributed flyers with her picture, appealed to everyone he could speak to.”

“Then he disappeared.”

“Well, until his body was found near the airport.”

“Right.”

“Interestingly, the family insisted no foul play was involved in his case, so we assume they were in contact with him. Then they hired an attorney and began to expand their investigation once LAPD said the woman crossed the border into Mexico.”

“How—”

“I don’t know how they could be sure. We can guess LAPD shared the circumstances of his death—that his body was found at the bottom of a parking structure and it looked like he had jumped from the top.”

“Hmm…and you said your cat died of kidney disease. Perhaps it lost its sight due to a sudden decline? It seems unrelated to the other events, but you think it had something to do with them?”

“Well, you know…it sometimes happens that a personal event—specific to an individual—will have a larger meaning.”

“OK. So why does the death of your cat have a larger meaning?”

“Because of its conjunction, as I said, with the other events.”

“Now you’re talking in circles.”

“OK, yeah. Sorry. The event is specific to a certain individual—can’t be anyone. That is, you understand the event in terms of the person’s life.”

“So why you?”

“I don’t know yet.”

He slapped the tabletop in irritation. “And yet…”

“And yet I’m sure the event is significant because it happened to me. It’s not for nothing that I am who I am and can guess things about people, the future.”

“You and a million others.”

“It’s just a matter of time.”

He grunted. Yukio was a third-generation Japanese American whose parents had met in a small town on the Big Island. He had a job as a Homeland Security investigator and had fictionalized a few cases for a local publisher. We didn’t know each other well, but I thought his investigative savvy and interest in fiction might make it possible for us to work together on my theory.

“In my college philosophy class, we learned that given enough time, contradictions resolve themselves. That’s why God can know everything: he alone has endless time.”

“If God had appeared to the woman’s father, perhaps he wouldn’t have killed himself?”

“Let’s hope not.”

“Yet a better man might not have—whether God appeared or not.”

“Better…lesser—who are we to measure the father? When he jumped from the parking structure and saw the road coming up fast, what did he think about? Or did he not think? Did he close his eyes? Did he say a prayer and ask for forgiveness—and yet it was retribution he sought, no doubt. Retribution as a failed father: Not only did I make my daughter run, but I failed to call her back. I could not make her return.

“We don’t know—as he didn’t—what made the daughter decide not to go on to New York.”

“Exactly. The tragic thing is that he was so sure he had failed.”

“However, the last time the family heard from her, she said she’d had a spiritual awakening and would be heading to New York after all. She was with a stranger that the police later tracked down and found was harmless. Other texts, though, caused the family alarm.”

“Yes, it was the presence of these unknown others that caused the family to think she’d been kidnapped or trafficked.”

Yukio and I sat in silence as the last of the silver slipped from the sky.