Slick

1 Save the Monk Seal For millions of years, the Keoki Atoll sisters had struggled with a shared inferiority complex. It's not that they weren't pretty. They were gorgeous. God just put them in a bad place. In the Hawaiian chain, they were two of the farthest-outlying landmasses, separated from the main islands by over twelve hundred miles of ocean. They weren't even touched by human feet until 1827, when Captain Stanikowitch of the Russian freighter Moller took a leg-stretch pit stop on Kaikaina, the little sister. For reasons beyond me, he named both islands George. From 1876 to 1932, both George and George (aka Kaikua'ana, the big sister) were courted by the Australian Guano Company, which was just using them for their mineral-rich animal shit. World War II was a particularly busy time for the sisters. The U.S. Navy commandeered the islands, renamed them Keoki Atoll (Keoki is Hawaiian for "George"), and set up quite an elaborate outpost. After the war ended, the Keoki base was maintained by a skeleton crew for forty-three more years, until the navy shut the place down. In May 1988, Keoki Atoll was reborn as a national wildlife refuge, housing such endemic but dwindling species as the blue hornbill turtle, the green hornbill turtle, and the Hawaiian monk seal. The sisters were now well protected from human meddlers, who needed a special permit just to come near them. But for all the government's best intentions, the hornbill turtleboth blue and greenleft the islands without explanation. In November 1997 the U.S. gave up on Keoki and leased the islands to Nomura, a Japanese holding company. Animal activists raised a loud stink in Washington, but that lasted about as long as Divx. Luckily for Nomura, the good people at Fairmont Hotels & Resorts were hot to add a Hawaiian dig to the franchise. The sisters were in for a serious makeover. They had one last year of peace and quiet before an army of developers swarmed all over them in a swirling frenzy of hammering and sawing. By October 2000 the Fairmont Keoki had risen: a 29-acre re- sort with 450 one-bedroom suites, 55 private beachfront villas, 40,000 square feet of function space, two full-service spas and fitness centers, six restaurants, twelve boutiques, a year-round children's program, full wedding coordination services, and a 140-foot waterslide. It was like a giant luxury cruise ship that wouldn't sink or go anywhere. The one remnant from the sisters' past lives was the navy airport on Kaikua'ana, fully expanded and upgraded to accommodate daily shuttles to and from Honolulu. The grand opening was set for Friday, February 2, 2001. To ensure that the resort got off to a running start, Fairmont had offered major incentive packages to their Platinum Club members and favored travel agents. Unfortunately, due to internal mismanagement, their promotion coincided with a massive PR blitz for the illustrious Fairmont Plaza in New York. As if stealing their own thunder wasn't bad enough, media operatives for the Landmark Hotels Groupstill bitter that Fairmont didn't acquire their own Kea Lani Hotel in Mauilaunched a covert, preemptive strike against the sisters. On January 12, The New York Times Sunday magazine ran a spoon-fed article on the "troubled" history of Keoki Atoll, focusing on the recent invasion of rats and deadly ants. As usual, this was painted air. The inexplicable rat epidemic occurred in 1987, while Keoki was still a wildlife refuge, and was permanently solved by a commercial pest-control gestapo. As for the ants, they came with the lumber, but the article failed to mention that they're only deadly to people who happen to be beetle-sized or smaller. For Fairmont, this was all bad mojo. Based on adPrice, Daniel is the author of 'Slick', published 2004 under ISBN 9781400062348 and ISBN 1400062349.