"What's her name?" asked the maintenance guy seated on a rock wall at the Key Project, his head lowered, beside his trash can, broom, black bags, and other tools of the trade. He seemed preoccupied, so I wasn't going to approach him, but the dog did. "Lilith," I said, but you can also call her Lily. "No," he said firmly when I asked if I could take his photograph. (I will leave out a detailed description of the man, though I _am_ writing about him. Privacy has its issues.) "Did you take one when we were cutting down the tree near here?" he asked. "The guy I cut it with, Popeye--we called him Pop--just died. Tuesday. 55 years old. Lived right up the hill [on Waihee Road]." I said how sorry I was to this man whose heavy face now made sense. He gazed into the common area, where a breakfast for Kupuna was being held, past the woman with the tattoos and her baby who'd talked to us at Creature Coffee Shop. She'd let me take a photo of one tattoo, a saying about God that had faded over time.
I told him my friend Ruth had lived up the street, too, and that she died recently. And a young guy (42) at the cemetery. He said someone in his family (60) had died recently. It's a difficult time, we agreed. "I guess we have to return to the present," I said in my best Buddhist cliche. "Yep, in and out, in and out," he said, his head moving back and forth, like it was a slow ping pong game.
"What's your name?" he asked me. I told him. He told me his, then his Hawaiian name, but everyone calls him by the first one, short for the second one.
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