My Kind of Town
>> Queen's Medical Center Mintzing steps
Tears gleamed on Greg's cheeks when Lily Ah Sun at last reached the main lobby. Her brother's lover greeted her with a big hug. He needed it.
"Thank you, Lily, thank you," he said with that slight accent Lily didn't quite recognize. Eastern European, maybe. "I've been beside myself all day."
"I can imagine." Too vividly.
"It's just not fair, you know, they won't let non-family members up there. That's why that law needs to be changed."
"Lance told me you, uh, guys had talked about getting married," she said, leading him toward the elevators.
"Just yesterday."
"By the way, what's your full name? That time we met, Lance just introduced you as Greg."
He stopped, faced her, bowed slightly from the waist. "Gregor Edmund von Mintz, Viscount of Wormshabstlutheraufgemachen."
"Really, royalty? From Germany?"
"Near the Luxenbourg border. Very minor royalty, and very without castle. My grandfather, I'm afraid, was wiped out by the truffle blight of '52."
"A pity," Lily said as if she was all too familiar with the terrible European truffle blight of 50 years ago. "So that's how you became a chiropractor in Hawaii?"
"Round-aboutly, yes."
"How old are you, Greg?" He had that look of overextended youth. It was a question Greg always tried to avoid answering directly. Besides being naturally young at heart, he'd been lipo'd, eye-tucked and more recently botoxed. Some silly number, 47 or whatever, was so irrelevant. "Old enough to feel very protective of Lance."
"No offense, your highness, but you did a crappy job of it at the hate crimes bill rally."
She was about to ask how well he protected her baby brother from various intimate infections when Gregor Edmund von Mintz, Viscount of Wormshabstlutheraufgemachen, sobbed and clutched Lily's arm.
"Oh, Lily, I know, I know! This is all my fault! It's bad enough worrying about Lance, but to know I'm responsible, it's just too much!"
Lily stopped at the elevators and before pushing the button for the ICU said, "Listen, Greg, you can't act like this in Lance's room. My mom's been up there for two days, OK, and believe me you don't know 'beside yourself' from a nose job."
She'd noticed. Was it so obvious? "I'll behave, Lily, I promise."
>> Arizona Memorial -- Theater 2
The film began and Muhammed Resurreccion really enjoyed the scenes of explosions. It gave him a vision of what he was about to accomplish for his people back on Mindanao. History would indeed repeat itself. Soon.
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