My Kind of Town
>> Portlock Meeting Muhammed
As the AAA truck towing her cousin Quinn's big pickup disappeared around the corner, Lily wondered again about the mysterious Clarence "Bobo" Ah Sun. She knew all the Ah Suns but had never heard of him until she came across several old newspaper articles about him at the State Library. And yet there was something strangely familiar about him in the photo she'd seen in one of Dave Donnelly's old columns. He was darker, more Hawaiian-looking than either her father or her Uncle Mits, but with familiar features. She'd have to ask her mother about Bobo.
Lily was about to go back inside when a silver-blue van rounded the corner, the female driver going slow and obviously looking for a particular address. She appeared to be Filipino, as did the male in the passenger seat. The van slowed nearly to a stop, and Lily saw them looking at the number on her mailbox and then at her.
"Rosalita!" she called to her maid through the open door. "I think your visitor has arrived!"
Lily met the van as it pulled into the driveway beside her teal BMW.
"Mr. Resurreccion?" Lily said through the window.
"Yes, and you must be Miss Ah Sun," Muhammed Resurreccion of Zamboanga replied graciously.
"Aloha," Lily said, welcoming a stranger to her home as Hawaiians have been doing for centuries. "It's so nice to finally meet you," she added as Rosalita hurried outside, holding her 6-year-old daughter's hand. "Rosalita and Elizabeth are very excited to see you."
As Muhammed stepped from the van, Rosalita and Elizabeth gave him a big hug. It was not, alas, the first time a foreign terrorist had been warmly welcomed to America.
>> Queen's Medical Center
Nurse Nina Ramones was just finishing changing the dressing on patient Quinn Ah Sun's right thigh where he'd been shot, and even through latex gloves her skilled and professional touch was warm and personal. Her touch, her smile, her presence were all conspiring to make him better.
"There we go," Nina said, touching his leg softly. She straightened up, pulled off her gloves.
Quinn reached out, took one of her hand's in his, gave it a little squeeze. "I feel so lucky," he said. "That you got shot?" Nina said with a tilt of her head, managing to tease and express sympathy in the same breath.
"I hadn't thought about it like that, but yeah, maybe so. I meant lucky they sent me the world's greatest nurse."
Nina blushed. "They" hadn't sent her. Nina, newly divorced, volunteered to work an OT shift just so she could care for Patient Ah Sun.
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