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mouth!
    “Mamie,” Leilani gushes, “I bought the cologne that Hotu uses.
    “
Ah bon?
”
    “
Oui,
and I spray it on my wrists when I go to bed, I smell my wrists and inhale him . . . I close my eyes, and I see —”
    “And what do you see?”
    “I can’t tell you!” Leilani exclaims.
    “Ah . . . it’s like that, eh?”
    Cackling, Leilani also admits that whenever she sees a man of Hotu’s build, her heart goes
bip-bip!
Here, yesterday she was walking to the bookshop where she works, when she saw a man hailing a taxi. He was tall, with a newspaper
     tucked under his arm, and from behind he looked a bit like Hotu. Leilani froze, right there in the middle of the footpath
     with people walking past and knocking her on the shoulders. She was like a coconut tree. And her heart was going
bip-bip!
    She was so tempted to phone Hotu afterwards just to hear his voice, but they had agreed not to call each other because it
     would make things difficult but . . . Ah, she misses him like crazy. “Mamie, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, it
     must have been the same for you when Papi was in France for military service.”
    “Girl, that was a long time ago,” Materena says, though she still remembers those days.
Ah oui,
she was obsessed with that boy Pito Tehana she used to meet in secret under the frangipani tree behind the bank. That was
     before he left for military service in France. And for the two whole years, Materena stayed faithful. She didn’t look at any
     other boys. She wasn’t even Pito’s official girlfriend back then, just this girl he knew and who was crazy about him.
    For two years Pito was constantly on Materena’s mind. She’d be slicing onions or folding clothes and she would see him, just
     like that. Sometimes he was smiling, sometimes he was winking. Other times he was kissing her on the mouth. And every day,
     for two whole years, Materena asked God for signs that Pito was thinking about her too. She even prayed.
    “You prayed?” Leilani sounds like she thinks it’s funny her mother prayed.
    “
Oui,
I prayed. I kneeled in front of the Virgin Mary, Understanding Woman, and prayed the same prayer. ‘Please make Pito come
     home to me, please don’t let him fall in love with a girl there in France, Amen.’ You know your grandmother was very worried.
     One day, she said to me, ‘Girl, that’s a lot of praying you’re doing, I hope you’re not asking the Virgin Mary, Understanding
     Woman, for a miracle.’ ”
    “Well, your prayers were answered,” Leilani giggles.
    “Your father didn’t even send me a postcard.”
    “Oh, Papi isn’t the kind to send people postcards, that’s all. I don’t even know if he can write.” Leilani hurries to add,
     “Not like you, I mean. For someone who left school at fourteen to clean houses, you write well, Mamie, and you never make
     spelling mistakes. And you are so strong, everybody likes you, and you have fans —”
    “I don’t have fans,” Materena laughs.
    “You do, stop fishing for compliments, of course you have fans. If you didn’t have fans, your program would have been already
     axed.”
    “Ah.” Materena has never thought of her listeners as fans.
    “And what else are you up to?” Leilani asks.
    “Well, I’m learning to drive.”
    “Mamie! You are a champion!
Eh-eh,
poor Papi, he must be feeling so intimidated by you, but he’s proud of you, he told me when he called me last week —”
    “Papi called you?” Materena asks, surprised.
    “Well
oui!
I’m not just your child, you know.” Leilani continues her story. Last week, when her father called for the first time, he
     said that he was very proud of Materena for her radio program and that he had listened to it once.
Enfin,
ten minutes of it. A woman was complaining of an article in the newspapers about a fisherman who had caught a four-hundred-pound
     tuna. The lucky fisherman was beside himself, he was going to get lots of money for his fish. But then he