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“This is your hotel here, Dusty.” My Uber driver, Earl, who I’ve learned on the twelve minute ride in from the Honolulu airport has been married to his high school sweetheart Marion for twenty-seven years, retired to Hawaii three years ago after Marion decided she could no longer handle the brutal Pittsburgh winters, has five grandchildren who visit for two weeks every Christmas and, as much as he loves seeing them, is always relieved when it’s time for them to go. I even know their names: Huck, Brodie, Cassandra, Milo and Imogen. “It’s the best hotel in Waikiki. No contest.”
We pull up outside an unbelievably luxurious hotel with tall columns and a welcoming row of stately palm trees. The scene is as picture perfect as…well, as a life-long fantasy of being sent to Hawaii for a fully paid-for work trip can be.
Travel brochures and marathon binges of Hawaii Life don’t really capture the neon turquoise of the water. Or the ideal temperature of the balmy, sea-scented air.
This place is unreal.
“Just wait until you see the views once you get inside,” Earl tells me. “You’re in for a treat. This is the oldest hotel in Oahu. The two towers on either side of the main building are the new additions, but the original hotel is where the charm is. The whole place is pure luxury.”
“It’s right on the beach?”
“Sure is. Best waterfront bar in Waikiki, hands down. An absolute magnet for love birds. I’m always giving rides to couples who are coming back to celebrate the place they first met, at least once a week. They’re on their honeymoons, or they’re here to celebrate their fifth, tenth or twenty-fifth wedding anniversaries. I once had this older couple coming back for their fiftieth. It’s as if this place is spiking its drinks with aphrodisiacs and love potions. And you have that look to you.” He winks at me in the rear view mirror.
“What look?”
“The starstruck one. The one that tells me your life is about to change.”
I laugh lightly. “Oh, no, I’m just here for a conference.”
“That’s what they all say.” He grins at me, then gets out to retrieve my bags.
I wriggle myself out of the backseat of the cab, no mean feat in the tight pencil skirt I poured myself into ten grueling hours ago. It was clearly the wrong choice for a hellish day of travel, but this is my first ever work trip and I was hoping to give the first impression of a put-together professional—a slightly crumpled one at this point, after a commuter flight from Austin to Houston, then eight and a half hours to Honolulu. I couldn’t really rock up to the business class lounge in my usual jeans and cowboy boots, as tempting as that might have been. If I want to be taken seriously as a newly-minted financial advisor, straight out of college and fighting her way to the top of a dog-eat-dog, heavily male-dominated scene, I at least need to look the part.
I thank Earl, giving my best to Marion, Huck, Brodie, Cassandra, Milo and especially Imogen (who suffers from stage fright and has a piano recital next Thursday), immediately rate him five stars and give him a huge tip. “Bye, Earl.”
“See you on your honeymoon,” he winks.
I smile and wave as he drives away. Good old Earl.
As much as Earl might think of himself as an oracle, I laugh off his prediction. For better or worse, the circumstances of my life have made me a die-hard realist. Any romantic tendencies I might have been born with got trampled by ambition and circumstance a long time ago.
I heave my gigantic suitcase—because I’ve never been on a work trip or to Hawaii and you never know what you might need—up the ramp. God bless the genius who invented wheeled suitcases, is all I can say.
Walking into the lobby of the hotel, I have to stop for a minute just to take in the breath-taking view.
Woah.
There’s a giant banyan tree (thank you, three a.m. googling sessions) in the middle of a scenic, wide-open courtyard. A glittering pool sits to its right and there’s a restaurant with a colorfully-lit stage, even in broad daylight, where a musician is singing a Hawaiian classic I recognize.
Somewhere Over the Rainbow.
You can say that again.
It’s so beautiful I feel like I’m hallucinating.
The bar is perfectly positioned under the majestic tree. Beyond that, the golden sand of Waikiki Beach and the twinkling blue water are as idyllic as a fantasy.
“Pretty spectacular, huh?”
A man is standing next to me. He’s dressed in a suit and has reddish, thinning hair and eyes so pale blue he almost looks see-through. He checks me out before his gaze lands once again on my face.
Um, no.
“Are you here for the conference? I'm Brad Channing. I’m with Rothwell and Dodd Financials.”
“Oh. That’s…nice.”
