My Kind of Town
Wings, not weights
>> 16th Avenue
Kate's expedition-size backpack, stuffed with framed photographs, wasn't heavy -- it was her new brothers, sisters, cousins. Not weights, but wings, and Kate felt herself floating through the Yim's front door and out to the sidewalk. She could hardly wait to get home and introduce these new relatives to the ones on her bookshelf. She heard TheBus a block away and hurried to catch it.
Having taken care of his emergency business at home, HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes was back in his 1971 Barracuda, firing up the 426-cubic inch "hemi" engine. At the end of the block he noticed the same young woman he'd seen getting off TheBus as he turned onto his street 15 minutes earlier. Her desert camouflage backpack was empty then, but now was lumpy and tugged heavily at her shoulders. What had she found to fill the backpack so quickly? And where had she found it?
If Gomes' suspicions were correct, he'd learn the answers soon enough. He watched her wave at TheBus coming up Pahoa Avenue, hurrying awkwardly under the weight on her back across the street. TheBus, No. 3, stopped and waited for her. She stepped aboard, showed a bus pass.
Gomes let TheBus get a block ahead before he followed. If she'd indeed burglarized one of his neighbors, he wanted to know where she got off and where she went.
>> Kalanianaole Highway
Lily Ah Sun should have been elated. Her younger brother Laird, about to graduate from Stanford Business with a masters degree, had come home to tell their father that he would not -- as was the plan -- immediately take over the family-owned Honolulu Soap Co. That, actually, was Lily's goal. She thought herself far more qualified -- she was already a successful business woman, the CEO of the subsidiary Ola Essences -- and had recently given their father a proposal to reorganize the company, making her Numero Uno. Which he'd promptly slapped down. So Lily should have been elated.
"Laird, for somebody who's so smart, I can't believe how stupid you are!" she said, sounding like a big sister. "Going to Afghanistan to teach the gospel to the mujahadeen is an invitation to get killed!"
"The gospel and capitalism."
"Taliban alumni will appreciate the distinction, I'm sure."
"Lily, when I read 'Jesus Was a CEO: The Gospel of Acquisitions,' it changed my life. The author, Christian X.O. St. James, is organizing this mission to Afghanistan." Laird paused, hit by a related thought. "By the way, he has a new book out. That's why I have to talk with Lance."
Lily could hardly wait to hear the title and what it had to do with their gay baby brother.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com