My Kind of Town
>> Three-way phone call Islamic teachings
"So what about you, Lil?!" Shauny Nakamoto said. She nearly always spoke in exclamation points. "What happened when that hunk cop cousin of yours came to drive you home?"
Lily Ah Sun's deep breath and long sigh told the story.
"That's either real good," Shauny said, "or real bad." No exclamation point, just wariness.
"It's both."
"Lily?" Fawn, Shauny's identical but very different twin, sensed something coming that she didn't really want to hear. "He's your cousin."
"First cousin," Shauny said. Again no exclamation point. Just curiosity, slightly salacious. "Oh do tell!"
They already knew about Lily getting pulled over by a motorcycle cop yesterday, and how he took her breath away, and she could tell he was feeling the same way, and then she gave him her license and he gasped. The cop was her cousin Quinn. Until that moment they hadn't spoken in 21 years, since their fathers quit speaking when Lily and Quinn were 6.
And Shauny and Fawn knew that after Lily and Shauny got drunk yesterday, Lily called Quinn for a ride home. They'd seen Quinn, a good-looking hapa guy who obviously worked out, lift her up into the cab of his big pickup truck. Shauny recalled wishing it was her.
"Everything was fine," Lily said, "until we got to Foodland."
"What?!" Shauny wasn't into nonsequitors.
"In Aina Haina. I had to stop to get Popsicles for Elizabeth. Long story. Anyway, I was so drunk I was leaning on Quinn, and he felt so perfect. And I felt so safe."
"Lily ..." Fawn said, drawing out the name with a little question mark at the end like Ricky saying "Luuuuuceeeeeee ...?"
Lily had some 'splaining to do.
"And then we stopped at Maunalua Bay. Just to talk."
"Yeah right!" Shauny was a realist.
"But everything was still OK. Nothing really happened until I stumbled and I was nose-diving into some rocks, but then Quinn, I don't know how, but somehow he swept me up, his arms were around me, and ..."
"And?!" Shauny, cutting to the chase.
"And we kissed ..." Lily left the word hanging there, lingering, as their kiss had lingered well past propriety.
"Oh ... my ... God!" Shocked and appalled, Fawn spaced the words in different time zones. "Lily, he's your cousin. It's not right."
"Hey, I was just reading an article about Ramadan," Shauny said.
"What?" Lily and Fawn echoed.
"And it's OK for Muslims to marry their cousins."
"Of course!" Fawn said. "It's because they're not Christians!"
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be emailed at dchapman@midweek.com