My Kind of Town
The Honolulu Soap Co.:
Sunday digest>>Kalanianaole Highway
Cruising in the middle lane, Quinn Ah Sun slides a CD into his truck's player. "This seems appropriate.""Omigod!"
"You like it?"
"That's the song I heard on the radio this morning after I saw you! I mean the first song after I got back in traffic! I thought, how perfect."
The song is a remake of the old Barbara Lewis hit "Hello Stranger" by the group Mauka Showers. Lily doesn't say it and neither does Quinn, but they both think it: This is our song. They don't say it because first cousins are not supposed to share an "our song." But it's too late already for the cousins Ah Sun.
>>Queen's Medical Center
Workwise it's been a great day for Dr. Laurie Tang. Personally is another matter. Dr. Tang and her ER team saved two lives - the unidentified young woman who was drunk, loaded on ice and stark naked when she crashed Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela-Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka's car and then the young man who had been attacked during a hate crimes rally, fell and hit his head on a concrete curb. Even after a long day part of her wanted to stay with her patients. That was the mothering side, the side she thought might be fulfilled in her relationship with Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela-Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka, in whose car she had made love less than a week ago. She'd had a perfect vision -she would be the First Lady, and after a few years they would be the first First Couple to have a baby at Washington Place. But now she doesn't know what to think. She needs to talk to Donovan.Returning to her office, Dr. Laurie checks messages, hoping for something from Donovan. No luck there, just calls from her mother and HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes, both asking about Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka, both asking her to call.
Laurie decides she'll get the easy part out of the way first and dials the detective.
>>Portlock
Rosalita pulls open the sliding screen door. Miss Lily likes her home to be open-air as much as possible, so during the day when someone is home the back door is open. Rosalita is on her way to get some ice out of Miss Lily's refrigerator, to make a cold press for her daughter Elizabeth's fever.Mickey watches from the kitchen door as the Filipina maid approaches the house. Somehow today the front door was unlocked. So when Mickey tried it after following the house's owner for two days, he walked right in, made himself at home. In fact, he's already had the better part of a bottle of white wine, taken a dip, and at the moment is wearing only a bath towel wrapped around his stretch-marked beer gut. The house's owner should be home soon. This Filipina cutie would be his warm-up act. He ducks back in the kitchen. Grabs a very large kitchen knife. Waits to grab her the moment she stepped into the kitchen, put the blade to her throat. Hears her light footsteps just around the corner. Hears a phone ring and a young girl call, "Mama! It's Auntie Lily!" Hears the maid let out a sigh and turn around.
>>Pearl City
Lt. Col. Chuck Ryan watches Fawn Nakamura push open the lobby door of the Pearl Palms condo after depositing her drunk twin sister Shauny. As Fawn walks toward him, Ryan feels his heart do the doo-wop.And again there is that moment of awkwardness, the older man, the younger woman. The chasm of the years, uncharted territory for both. And more: the 52-year-old widower and the 27-year-old virgin. Yet it feels so comfortable.
"Would you like to have tea?" Fawn says, surprising herself. "I hear they do a nice tea at the Kahala Mandarin. I've never been, but ..."
"I'd love to," Ryan said, feeling luckier and luckier.
>>Kalanianaole Highway
"So how's the drunk girl doing?" Quinn says with that boyish grin of his as they pass Kuliouou in his truck.And Lily has to grin back. "Grateful, Quinn, that's how. Boy, I really overdid it. Thanks for rescuing me."
"Any time. You want to tell me why you decided to get wasted in the middle of the day?"
Her anger returns in a heartbeat. Quinn can feel it across the air-conditioned cab. He has an impulse, and suddenly brakes and turns into the Maunalua Bay parking area. Later Quinn will wonder why. So many things could have been different if he'd just continued straight ahead to Lily's house. But too late already. The turn has been made. And besides, nobody could be sure what might have happened. Things turn out the way they turn out, that's all you could ever say. Quinn was a realist.
In fact, Quinn was a total existentialist. But you wouldn't want to say it to his face.
He parked to the right of the boat launch ramp as a crescent moon charmed the dusky sky.
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