My Kind of Town
>> Portlock Provisions
and PopsiclesIn the back seat of the black SUV parked in the shade of a banyan tree, Wili was getting uncomfortable.
"Braddah, if I no find one lua soon, you going be sorry."
"I no like," said his brother Tai in the driver's seat. They'd been in his SUV from early this morning, looking for, then finding and tailing the creep Mickey who ripped off their cousin Seth's daughter in a drug deal. They were on a traditional aufoga, a mission of justice, and had just watched as he parked his piece-of-bleep faded gray sedan and walked up to a fancy house. He tried the door and it opened. "An' you try da kine, ah, public urination in this neighborhood, they going arrest you, Brah."
"For sure," Seth agreed.
"Then we get one problem," Wili said.
"Nah." Seth opened the passenger seat door, clutching his cell phone. "You guys run down, do your business, get us something to eat. I got a feeling we're going be here a while. The more I think about it, the more I think Mickey just walked into the house of the babe in the teal BMW he was tailing when we found him. I'll wait here. If he tries to leave, I'll call. Then I'll bust him. But I think he's inside for a while."
>> Foodland -- Aina Haina
"You have a maid?" said Quinn Ah Sun as he parked his white Dodge pickup.
"I'm not the domestic type," Lily Ah Sun said. "Remember when we were kids, I wasn't into dolls. I liked running around outside with you, riding bikes, climbing trees, going to the beach."
Until today it had been 21 years since they'd seen one another. And then he'd pulled her over for speeding, and in a twinkling of eyes they shared a moment of silent passion and eternal longing. But then he looked at her drivers license and couldn't decide if he should be overjoyed or sick to his stomach. The young woman who had taken his breath away was his long-lost cousin Lily. And then this afternoon, she'd gotten stinking drunk and needed a ride home. They didn't just have a lot of catching up to do, they had to get to know each other all over again.
Quinn opened Lily's door. "And your maid has a daughter who lives with you?"
"Elizabeth. She's 6, the cutest little thing you ever saw. She's sick and I promised to bring her some Popsicles. Hey, how do I get down from here?"
From the huge truck, Lily sat looking down at Quinn.
"Same way you got up there."
In Quinn's big arms. Lily was hoping that was the answer.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin.
He can be emailed at dchapman@midweek.com