My Kind of Town
The Honolulu Soap
Co.: Sunday digest>>Portlock
Rosalita Resurreccion checks the thermometer and places a fresh cold washcloth on her daughter's forehead."When is Auntie Lily coming home with Popsicles?" Elizabeth says, sounding very tired.
Rosalita is Lily's cook, maid and caretaker, and lives with her daughter in the cottage behind Lily's home. But Elizabeth, 6, calls her mother's employer Auntie Lily. "Not until later. You take a nap."
At that moment, the front door opens and the guy who's been tailing Lily Ah Sun for two days walks right in.
>> Makiki Heights
At the hideaway he keeps for Serena, Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka is up, he's down. A puff of ice to get up. A puff of pakalolo to even things out. And now he's thirsty. But the fridge is empty. Not one beer. Oh yeah, they'd drunk them all last night."Serena?" But then he remembers. They fought because she's pregnant and refuses to have an abortion, and she wasn't there when he awoke this morning. He calls The Grocery Boy private shopping service. It's not until he hears a knock on the door 30 minutes later and goes outside to pay for a case of Bud longnecks that the senator notices his car is missing. And Serena doesn't know how to drive.
>> Honolulu Iron Works
As Lily and Shauny start on their fourth glasses of white Merlot, Lt. Col. Chuck Ryan asks the question that's been on his mind since the girls joked during their workout about getting drunk for lunch."Lily, to what do we owe this mid-day Bacchanalia?"
Anger flares again in her eyes. "Well, at first I was just pissed that my father rejected this great proposal I'd spent months on, to reorganize the company now that he's talking about retirement. And then he said he's naming Laird president. My younger brother. A nice kid, about to graduate. But all he knows is books and theories. I've been running a company for years. But I'm not the eldest son. And now I'm so pissed, I'm thinking about leaving."
>> Queen's Medical Center
It was bad enough that they wouldn't let Greg ride in the ambulance when they took Lance to the ER. Instead the police questioned Greg. Now at the ER entrance, they won't tell him anything. Family must be notified first. If they were married, it would be different.Greg is angry, frustrated and worried. But mostly he is feeling guilty. He insisted that Lance join him at the hate crimes bill rally. And Lance, the sweet, innocent, unpolitical one, cared enough to come.
And then, it was like Greg told the cops. There was shouting back forth with the Gabbardites, but everything was OK, until a big skinhead threw a punch at Lance. He dodged it, but tripped and fell hitting his head on a concrete curb.
>> Zippy's -- King Street
Just 12:45 p.m., but it's been a long day already for HPD solo bike Officer Quinn Ah Sun as he sits down to write reports of the two incidents he'd handled.First the senator's car crashed. Quinn was the first officer on the scene and watched paramedics pull an unconscious woman from the car -- drunk, loaded on ice, stark naked.
Then Quinn received an urgent call to provide crowd control for the hate crimes bill rally at the Capitol, where a skinhead attacked a young local gay, causing a riot.
But as Quinn works on his reports, it's images of his first encounter of the day that flash through his mind. He pulled over a woman speeding on the H-1. And as he stood at her door, they'd shared a wordless gaze that lingered, and all he wanted in the world was her. But then he glanced at her license. "Lily Ah Sun?"
She's the cousin he hadn't seen in 21 years. So he let her off with a warning. And the moment he finishes these damn reports, he is going to call her.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin.
He can be emailed at dchapman@midweek.com