Delicious by Mark Haskell Smith

Author:Mark Haskell Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2005-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

Sitting at a little table just outside the shaved ice store on a small side street, Lono watched Yuki dig in to a massive bowl of the stuff. She’d gotten the kind he’d recommended, sweet red azuki beans and lilikoi syrup.

“You like?”

Yuki nodded, her mouth full of melting ice. “I’m getting brain freeze.”

“That’s a common side effect.”

She scooped up a big mound of the ice and held her spoon out to him. “Have a bite.”

“You sure?”

“You’ve earned a reward.”

Lono smiled. “What did I do?”

“Saved me.”

“You could’ve taken him.”

Yuki smiled; she locked eyes with him and pushed the spoon up to his lips. “C’mon.”

Lono knew resistance was futile; he wanted her to feed him, to put something cool and refreshing and sweet in his mouth. He parted his lips.

“I thought this was your favorite.”

“Mmm. It is. It is.”

Lono had eaten this exact same dessert from this exact same shave ice stand hundreds of times. He’d had it at least once a week for as long as he could remember. But this was the first time it tasted so sweet it almost brought tears to his eyes. The ice she put in his mouth was crunchier, more crystalline. The lilikoi syrup was brighter somehow, not just the color but also the flavor. And the azuki beans? Had anyone ever tasted such earthy sweetness and depth of flavor in a shave ice before?

“Do you want another bite?”

“Please.”

She playfully spooned another helping into his mouth. He could tell she was having fun feeding him. She was looser than when he met her before. Sexier. Confident.

He tasted the shave ice, and the second bite was even better than the first. That’s how Lono knew he was in love.

...

When the beach patrol finally found Francis, sometime after midnight, he was curled up in a fetal position, his pants around his ankles, his right hand still clamped on his erection. He had two cracked ribs and a bruised kidney, but his face was what scared them. At first they thought he’d been in an accident or fire, but after they shined a flashlight on him they realized that it was just sand sticking to the blood that was smeared all over.

One of the patrolman noted—he actually wrote it down in his evidence report pad—that the badly beaten man had muttered one word over and over.

“Chad.”

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