Thursday


At the plantation the thing seems like a lark:  a restaurant that serves tiki drinks and plunks you down on the shore to watch the mantas come in at night.   (Get it?  "Ray's" on the Bay?)  The drive is brief enough and we are in just the right mood for something glamorous and a bit overpriced.

So we negotiate the terrifying driveway and are not at all perturbed by the rumbling sound in the sky and the spattering showers that turn to steady rain.  But on a straight, lushly-planted drive above the timeshares of South Kona the sky turns pinkish red and instead of rain we're deposited in a mountain stream.  The sky is a great bucket that just tipped.  Storm gratings under the road vomit their overflow and every ditch, every depression is white with water.  The surface of the road is actually stippled with whitecaps.  The car drifts lazily over these slicks, suddenly without ambition to do anything in particular.  I keep up the low patter, at least at times, to suppress the creepy feeling.  I see a hill coming, above a nest of rooftops and what I hope to be our destination.  I'm not looking forward to it.

About the time we turn into the parking zone the rain abates and we find the presence of mind to wonder at the acres and acres of parking and access.  It's hard to tell whether we're in a resort, a darkened financial district or an airport.  Eventually I find the great breezeway and two-way loop that means, in any setting, "Lobby".   And with "lobby" comes "entrance" and "valet".  The last practically runs out to meet us.  He's extremely clean-cut, the sort of guy you find in slacks and polo on the golf course.  He tells us to look for the Gold Tower.  In fact, all the towers look gold:  the exterior lighting, the streetlamps, all a rich yellow.  Eventually I spot a grotto of reds and blues and flickering tiki torches that must be the restaurant.  We make for it, temporarily losing ourselves in a maze of sweeping walks, bromeliads and koi ponds.  Somehow we come up in a breezeway just outside the entrance.

The restaurant is a late '60s spectacle, with massive, sweeping terraces and deep rattan chairs arranged around tables that contain fire pits.  The hostess takes us straight to one of these. We're not there long before Meredith points seaward.  Powerful lamps illuminate the surf.  The fin of a manta ray that looks about the size of a la-z-boy recliner peels up out of the water and slips in again.  I see its mouth, like a bay within a bay, billowing complacently in the waves.

Then it's time for drinks.  Our waiter, Willie, is extremely polished, with big, toothy grin and bulletproof demeanor. We order a Hibiscus and Bourbon and Dark and Stormy.  They're a little slow in coming, as are our plates, but it's a busy night and it seems in bad form to quibble in a place like this.   Farther under the roof, the tables make a reef in which the guests mill in little bait balls or sit in their cubbies like contented blennies. Further back is the grotto of the bar, all silver spines and blue dimness.  It's a place to inflate even the most tired schoolboy James Bond fantasy.  

After the food comes, a pair of wary cats come to stare up at the guests on the terrace and crouch near their exit between the bars of the railing.  The black-and-white reminds me of Paulina and her ambition, and just for a moment I wish I was there with her.  Meredith and I fuss over them as if they belonged to us.  After a time, smaller versions come slinking through the bars.