The elderly Hawaiian woman was now standing in front of her lone companion,
"Alika! We go! Nobody coming already,"
“Hah?” Alika responded.
"NOBODY COMING!" She shouted.
"Nobody coming?" Alika asked. "How come?"
"Cause dey all too old or dey all dead! Pretty soon, we are going to be dead! We go already!" She shouted.
"No talk like dat!" Alika shoed her away. "They going come!"
"We eighty-six already, Alika," the woman reminded her companion.
"I telling you dey going come," Alika insisted.
"How you know?" The woman was practically interrogating the old man.
"Das was always your problem, Hattie; you don't have faith," Alika replied. "Das, why you still one old maid until today,"
Hattie looked at her watch and smirked, "This event was supposed to start at seven; it's nine now. We only have this place until ten; dey got one hour to show up,"
The next forty-five minutes dragged by slowly until Alika finally realized that Hattie might be correct. Their old friends were not going to show. They had lives of their own, after all: children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Some were in retirement homes, while others were ridden with dementia and incontinence. The ones who were supposed to come were the last few, and they lived at a senior care home. There was a mini-bus that was supposed to take them.
The DJ for the night played "A Summer Place." The sweeping music filled the ballroom, and for Alika, that was the final call: There would be no reunion. He managed to rest his aged body from his chair, took Hattie out to the dance floor, and held her close.
"I was stupid; I really wanted to believe they would come. I was wrong," Alika said, misty-eyed.
"Don't be too hard on yourself; some theories are just theories, that's all," Hattie assured him.
"Yeah, but if you die all of a sudden, quickly, one time, and you no mo' time for 'tink. Maybe you dunno you're dead? Maybe you 'think you still alive, so if the last thing you 'thinking are you going drink one beer and then you die one time..." Alika must have repeated this theory to Hattie a million times in the last ten years.
"Then your ghost is going to come back and drink that beer.… Yeah, yeah, I know, I've heard it so many times, Alika. It's getting old, like us." Hattie sighed.
Hattie noticed that Alika had suddenly gone quiet and that he did not reply with the usual pissed-off tone once she'd pushed his buttons. She looked at him to see what was wrong, but his eyes never met hers.
He was looking right past her, his finger pointing toward the doors.
They'd come, after all. They shuffled in slowly, but there they were, mangled, broken, flesh hanging from some of their faces. All some of the others could do was crawl because their torsos were all that was left; their intestines trailed behind them and left a line of slime and blood on the finely manicured carpet. The rest were unrecognizable because they were burnt to a crisp, but no matter the circumstances, they came.
"I told you," Alika said. "I told you,"
…
The mini-bus from the senior care home left the facilities at six in the evening and was well ahead of schedule as it headed to Waikiki. Its occupants were excited and relieved to be out and about. As the vehicle took the South King Street exit, it was rear-ended by a Matson truck that was forced to take the same exit when it was cut off by a speeding car. The forward momentum and weight of the truck sent the mini-bus flying over the guard rail, where it cleared the overpass and landed head-first on the other side of the freeway. A few of the occupants in the vehicle were killed instantly. Others died slowly from the injuries they suffered, the rest burned to death once the mini bus burst into flames. But come hell or high water, they made it to the dance.
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