My Kind of Town
The Honolulu Soap Co.:
Sunday Digest>> Heights
"Serena?" Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka calls from the bed.No reply. Serena doesn't work, doesn't have to with the campaign fund money he gives her to live in this hillside hideaway. And what exactly did they do last night, besides party?
They fought. She'd just learned that day she was pregnant, which was supposed to be impossible with the birth control pills he pays for.
"So we get you an abortion," he says and pats her thigh.
"I want to keep it, Donovan."
"That's impossible," he says .
But where is Serena now?
>>Honolulu Soap Co.
Lily will get over it, Sheets Ah Sun says to himself as he walks back to his office. He hates to hurt her because even at 27 she's special, the first child to come into his life, the family's only daughter. But in naming his eldest son Laird as the new president of the soap company, Sheets knew he was doing the right thing.Maybe now Lily would think less about her career and more about finding a husband. She'd dated enough guys over the years to find a husband. But most of them, he suspected, were turned off by her devotion to work and her hunger for success.
>>The Queen's Medical Center
Dr. Laurie Tang begins removing the gleaming fragments of glass from the patient known only as 46-225909's forehead and cheeks. As she works, Dr. Tang can't help wondering what 46-225909 was doing drunk and high on ice in the senator's Town Car, a vehicle in which she's been a passenger recently.But surgeons are not permitted painful romantic reminders while on duty.
46-225909's eyes flutter open and she murmurs: "Please ... save the baby... "
"Baby?" Dr. Tang blurts.
What Charge Nurse van Truong can't figure is why Dr. Laurie is taking this case so personally.
>> Honolulu Soap Co.
Lily Ah Sun's private-line shama thrush phone chirps. "Hello ... oh, hi, Lance!" Trying to mask her hurt and disappointment with a fake exclamation point."I have some really big news!" her youngest brother says and pauses dramatically. "I'm bringing Greg along for Laird's graduation."
"And how are you going to introduce him to Mom and Dad?"
"As my friend... and the man I hope to marry."
"Oh boy."
"Anyway, listen, I had to share the good news. I'm on my way to meet Greg now. We're going to the demonstration in support of the hate crime bill.
"Lily, this is my coming out party!"
>> Cartwright Field
HPD Officer Quinn Ah Sun is happy to turn over responsibility for the senator's overturned Town Car to Sgt. Olga Pimentel's Traffic Accident Investigation Section team."Don't you smell lovely," she teases as he signs off. "Perfumed note from some young lovely?"
"Business card, actually," Quinn says, tapping his shirt pocket, blushing.
Gardenias have been wafting up from his pocket since he pulled over a woman for speeding and she turned out to be his long-lost cousin Lily, and gave him her card.
It's especially a shock because before he knows she is his first cousin, she affects him in a way that no woman ever has. And try as he might, Quinn cannot keep visions of Lily in her few-secrets-if-you-have-half-an-imagination white silk suit out of his mind.
>> Honolulu Soap Co.
Sheets hears on the radio that the senator's car has crashed off the Keeaumoku Overpass. He's about to call his wife, the senator's secretary, when news anchor Kai Maxwell says: "The Board of Water Supply reports that a Waimanalo well is contaminated with a variety of chemicals, including mercury and used motor oil. Officials do not know the source of the chemicals, but are investigating."Sheets swears under his breath. That's when his phone rings once and stops.
Then once. Then twice. The secret code used by him and his brother Mits on the rare occasions they need to talk. It had to be secret because 21 years ago they decided it would be best if they didn't associate publicly. That's when they concocted the story about a feud between the brothers Ah Sun.
Sheets picks up the phone and says: "What the hell's going on?"
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin.
He can be emailed at dchapman@midweek.com