Free Haole Wood by Dee DeTarsio

you can see me I am in big trouble. You are not supposed to see me.” He stood up and looked at his hands. “For real?”
    “How could I not?” I said. I turned back around to face him. I tried to keep my eyes up and not look south of his belly button, an impressive innie which appeared to be able to store a small teacup. I focused on his brown eyes that crinkled as a big smile with dimples marking its endpoints broke through his light brown skin. Oops. I let up for one second and my eyes swooped down to ground zero. My head reared back. For one split second I had to fight the giggles. My sister and I had always cracked up at the poor nuns in our grade school trying to give the health and human hygiene talk, (the one for which we needed a signed permission slip) that came complete with illustrated pictures, drawn on the chalkboard by the brides of Christ themselves. I may not have much in common with my sister, Josephine, but we both never failed to laugh at the cover of Dr. Seuss’s Horton Hears a Who . What stood before me though, was no joke. I shook my head. I must be hallucinating. Surely, I was not staring at some three hundred-pound man’s privates.
    I tore my gaze away. “What’s that on your lip?” I pointed.
    His tongue reached out and swiped it away. “Nothing,” he answered, his eyes shifting.
    My hand covered my mouth. “Was that . . . blood?” I stepped back and looked around frantically for my cell phone.
    He started laughing. “Blood. That is a good one. Do you think I eat animals?” He had a deep, booming chortle. “I am not a vampire, either, just so you know.” He stopped laughing and ran his hands through his black curly hair. “So, you can see me?”
    “Yes.” I stamped my foot. “Who are you and what are you doing in my grandmother’s house? Naked, no less?” I grabbed my beach towel and tossed it at him. He caught it and tried to wrap it around his waist. It covered him as if it were the size of a dish towel.
    “Get out. Right now. Before I call the police.”
    He raised his hands up in front of him and pumped the air. “Calm down, Jaswinder. Everything is going to be fine.”
    “How do you know my name? Do you know my grandmother?”
    “Of course.”
    “So, she was expecting you?” My eyebrows crept up to my hairline. “And why wouldn’t you put on clothes or something?” Just then I heard my grandmother. Thank God. I turned to greet her. “Halmoni, a friend of yours just showed up,” I said to my grandmother who just nodded and smiled back at me. I pointed over to nakie-guy. “He didn’t tell me his name . . .” My grandmother just stood there. “Halmoni, look.” I jabbed my finger toward the elephant in the room. My grandmother’s gaze flickered before looking back at me. “Do you know this guy? Is he a friend of yours?” No response. “A client? A giant?”
    Halmoni shrugged her shoulders and headed back into her kitchen.
    “Wait.” She just smiled at me over her shoulder and kept walking. I turned back to the man. “What is going on here? My grandmother walks in the door and pretends she can’t see a big and tall fellow like yourself wearing nothing more than a smile? I thought you said you knew her.”
    “I do.” His face beamed. “She just does not know me.”
    “Get out!” I raised my voice. “Now!” My head throbbed and this baboon needed to be gone. I stomped to the front door. “Please. Leave.”
    “Jaswinder,” he began.
    “What? You’re making me very uncomfortable.”
    “Your grandmother does not know me because she cannot see me.”
    “Right. And she can’t see you because you are so hard to miss.”
    “Well, she cannot see me because she is not supposed to. And neither are you. It is the most curious thing. I am sure I am in trouble over this, but I do not know how it happened.”
    “How what happened?” I asked.
    “How you can see me.”
    “No offense, pal, but you’re a pretty big target.” His nostrils were so large,