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My Kind of Town

by Don Chapman

Thursday, March 22, 2001


Vol. 1: The Honolulu Soap Co.

Without shades

>>Wilder at Clement, Metcalf and Farrington

While he bought a Lilikoi Icee at the Arco/7-Eleven, the unshaven guy in the "EH!" T-shirt that was cut short to show off his beer-gut stretch marks kept an eye on the babe in the teal Beamer and the motorcycle cop outside.

"How are you doing today?" asked Liu, one of the cheeriest clerks in town.

"Nnh," was the reply as Stretch Marks paid with loose change, shuffled out the door and sort of pretended to check the air pressure in the sedan's balding tires.

The young HPD motorcycle cop removed his mirrored Oakley shades, leaned closer. He needed to make eye contact with this beautiful young local woman he'd just pulled over.

He glanced at her license again, looked back to Lily. She was stunned by his good looks and athletic physique. This big local boy was ripped, as they say at the gym. Tempting, but she could resist that. Lily usually needed more than muscle and a handsome face.

But now he was looking at her in a way that warmed her inside. And in a twinkling she felt drawn into his light brown hapa eyes and found herself removing her DK sunglasses and looking back. And the cop fell into her hazel-green eyes as into a sea Hawaiians call kaiolohia, "tranquil."

And for a moment the cop and Lily shared a gaze. A few feet away traffic moved and slowed and stopped and moved again and traffic lights changed, and a letter was mailed at the corner box, and gallons of gasoline were pumped and quarts of coffee poured, and the moment lingered still ... well past propriety.

"Lily?" His eyes searched her's for something, and her heart raced and fluttered.

But there was something in the way he said her name.

"Has to be you," he said, breaking the spell, exhaling. He looked again at her license. "The birth date is right. Unbelievable!"

For the first time, Lily noticed the name stitched in gold on his blue uniform: "Q. Ah Sun." They shared the same last name. Not many Ah Suns in the phone book.

"Quinn?" she said tentatively.

He nodded, smiled radiantly.

"Omigod!" She couldn't believe it!

"Long time, cousin."

>> Tomorrow: Come together, right now


Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the
Star-Bulletin.



Send E-mail to dchapman@midweek.com.



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