Hula Girl

There was something a little off about the hula girl on Rick’s dashboard. If I could’ve just focused a little more, got everything to spin a little less, maybe I could’ve figured out what it was. The car smelled new or rented, but Rick sure didn’t look like the kind of guy that could afford something like that. He didn’t really seem like a person that’d have a car at all, much less a clean one. That’s probably part of why I left the bar with him.

“Where we goin’?” I asked, poking the hula girl in the belly, like that’d get her to spill.

“Dunno yet,” Rick replied. “South.”

“Fine.” I burrowed myself into the door and closed my eyes. “Wake me up when we hit the border.”

Rick laughed the coughing sort of laugh that chain-smokers have. “Si, señor.”

Now, I can tell you, I’m the sort of guy who could sleep through anything. Seriously. I went to the Super Bowl XXXV in Tampa with a buddy of mine, and missed the entire third quarter. In any event, I really wanted to get some shuteye while Rick drove us wherever. I was pretty well convinced that Rick meant “crazy” when he said it.

“Jake, you’re comin’ with me,” he had said in the bar, giving me Clint Eastwood’s awkward grin like it was something brand new, “And we’re gonna do something crazy.”

So I figured I’d need as much sleep as I could get before we went and set all the psychos free from the county asylum or broke into the police commissioner’s house or whatever other shenanigans Rick’d come up with. The trouble was, I could feel that hula girl watching me, staring at me without blinking with those painted-on eyes of blue.

I opened my eyes up, just a little bit, and stared right on back. But how the hell could I win a staring contest with something that couldn’t even blink? “It’s practically cheatin’,” I muttered.

“What?” Rick asked.

“Nothin’,” I said, “Just drunk.” I had to be a lot further gone than I’d thought. Which I guess was the point.

“Where’d you get this anyway?” I poked the hula girl’s hip and sent her dancing.

“Check the derriér.” Rick glanced over from the road to the tiny, black-haired figure. He wasn’t quite smiling but I got the feeling he felt like it.

Thinking myself a bit ungentlemanly, I lifted the hula girl’s grass skirt and read, printed across her anatomically-correct, nude behind,


Made in Honolulu
I got my EYE on you!!!


It would’ve made sense if the latter message’d been written in pen or something, but this was typed or stamped on in a curling, fancy font. I made sure to put every strip of grass back in place to cover the hula girl’s behind, and set her back on the dash.

“Who’s got their eye on you?”

“Some guy.” Rick chuckled, sending him into a short coughing fit. When he’d got back control he added, “Used it to get my attention. Cute, huh?”

“Creepy’s more like. ‘I got my eye on you’? What kinda pick up line is that?”

But it had obviously worked on Rick. He was smiling and seeing something before him that sure weren’t the road. “Pretty lame, huh? Waiter brought me a mojito and that doll, and smiled at me. Well, I’m more of a beer guy- you know- and it took me half the night to see that he’d written something’ on the napkin under the drink.” Rick paused and looked over at me, keeping quiet until finally I prompted him, “And? What did it say?”

Rick let out a little sigh. “It said ’11:30. Read the ass.’”

Now I can tell you, and with no doubt whatever, if I’d been Rick, I’d have never gone out with someone who couldn’t put two words together to ask me out outright, much less on paper. To be perfectly honest, I didn’t know Rick that well, but he was certainly strange and that was something I needed in my life at the time. Anything to break the pattern I was falling into, just like my daddy. I just didn’t realize quite how crazy he’d turn out to be.

“Did you meet him?” I asked, figuring I better humor Rick ‘cause he was getting really into this cockamamie pick up story.

Rick nodded. That sad sort of nod where you just kind of let your head drop and it bounces an inch back up. “We broke up last week.”

“Oh…” Obeying a strange urge, I turned the hula girl away, so she looked out the window instead of at me. “Sorry.”

“Yeah,” Rick replied. “Me too.”

I wasn’t ready for it when the car suddenly stopped. My whole body jerked forward and the seat belt dug deep into my stomach. The hula girl jumped up from the dash and hit the windshield. I set her back up in her place and checked outside to see where we’d ended up.

The house seemed normal enough. Pick-up parked in the driveway and all the lights off. Maybe a little early for bed on a Friday; it wasn’t even midnight. A nice red mat sat below the door with “WELCOME!” written across it, probably big enough to see from outer space.

“Come on.” Rick turned the headlights off, but left his car running, as he stepped outside.

“Where are we?” I asked in a whisper. I was starting to get a bad feeling, like I’d be better off staying in the car with the creepy hula girl. “Shouldn’t one of us watch the car?”

“Yeah, that’s smart. I’ll be right back, okay?” Rick started to close the door but stopped midway to reach back in and grab the hula girl, taking her with him to the house.

I’d expected Rick to break a window or jimmy the lock or, at the very least, ring the doorbell, but Rick just fished a key out from above the doorframe and let himself in without much to do. A few lights in the house went on not long after that. You couldn’t see anything though, from where I was, on account of the curtains being pulled, but I could hear some shouting. The lights went off in that room then on in another. This one didn’t have curtains, so I could see Rick talking with some young guy in his boxers. The young guy kept using his hands to do his shouting, while Rick just kept his arms crossed and used his mouth, the hula girl at his side. After throwing his hands up high like that was the end of it, the young guy went back to the room with the curtains, and Rick followed.

It seemed like the noise kept getting louder and louder and I figured, if I opened my window, I could tell exactly what they were saying. But I didn’t. I didn’t do much of anything for the next five minutes, the many hours that followed, or the days turned into weeks while the police were looking for Rick and me and the hula girl turned murder weapon.


Copyright 2009 Amanda Martin

© Amanda Martin, 2009