My Kind of Town
Parallel lives
>> 2002 Wilder
It's remarkable how often the work of HPD cops and ER docs is interwoven.
Somebody gets in a big car crash, cops go to the scene, the victim goes to the ER. A criminal gets injured while fleeing cops, the arresting officer goes with him to the ER. Or like tonight, a bunch of people get sliced with shrapnel from a terrorist suicide bomb in Waikiki, cops get called to the intersection of Kuhio and Seaside, the Queen's ER staff gets called for some OT.
So it was that Dr. Laurie Tang and HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes were hurrying back to her condo from his impromptu swimming lesson, neither aware of details, only that the night was filled with sirens and both of their beepers had just gone off for the second time. The night was still young but they would not be spending it together.
"Must be nice living so close to work," Gomes said as Laurie slid the key in the door. Queen's was just minutes away.
"Mixed blessing," she said, leading him inside. "Short commute, but it's too easy to be there any time another body is needed. And I try to have a life ..."
They stood in the foyer as the door shut behind them, Laurie with a pareau wrapped around her yellow one-piece swimsuit, Gomes with a towel wrapped around his shorts.
She lightly touched his muscular chest with one finger, as if about to say something, felt Gomes' hands slide around her waist. She took a deep breath, looked up into his light brown eyes. "I'd better answer my page. You too."
"I know. We both have work to do." But he pulled her closer.
"I'm sorry the evening is ending so soon. We didn't even get around to dinner."
"There'll be another time, I hope."
"There will be," Laurie said a heartbeat before their lips met.
If they hadn't been so breathless, and if the kiss hadn't lingered so long, they might have noticed a slight stirring just around a corner, where Salvatore Innuendo was determined that there would not be a next time for the new lovers.
>> Makiki Heights
As often happened, Machiavelli Wang was feeling quite pleased with himself.
As Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka slept off a three-day binge on ice, Buds and buds, Machiavelli reviewed details of the story he'd just concocted to get the senator back in the run for governor, especially with his fellow Democrats so far able to muster up only their version of a three-legged race.
The senator's so-called "absence" at a critical time was, in fact, because he'd been held against his will by a cell of Native Hawaiian terrorists.
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