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My Kind of Town

by Don Chapman

Thursday, June 21, 2001


Talking with
his hands

>> Maunalua Bay

Sitting high in the cab of her cousin Quinn's truck, Lily Ah Sun felt Quinn's big, strong fingers wrap around her waist like a weightlifting belt. And as she turned in the seat to face him, she placed her hands on his shoulders, and he lifted her gently back to earth. She kept her hands on his shoulders. Quinn did not immediately remove his hands from her waist.

"You know, Lily, if you weren't my cousin ..."

"Oh, Quinn, I know." She slumped her head against his chest, stayed there, felt the pounding of his heart.

"But you are my cousin. And unlike you I'm sober. I think we'd better walk." He stepped back, took a deep breath, and they disentangled, kind of.

"I still need to lean on you, cousin," Lily said. She was starting to sober up from her afternoon of drinking. But the ground was so uneven here.

"Here, take my hand." And so the cousins walked hand in hand, in silence, in the low glow of a new moon beside the sea.

>> Queen's Medical Center

Dr. Laurie Tang returned to her office after a long day in the ER, hoping to have a message from Donovan. Her first patient of the day, known only as 46-525909 because she carried no ID, had been driving Donovan's car when it crashed. "Please save the baby," she'd said. There must be a reasonable explanation. She wanted to hear it from him. Unfortunately, no message from Donovan, just one from her mother and another from a Detective Sherlock Gomes of HPD, both asking about Donovan, both asking her to call back. Laurie thought she'd get the easy part out of the way first and dialed the detective. He wasn't in, so she left her home number.

>> Ninoy Aquino International Airport -- Manila

One of the things Muhammed Resurreccion liked best about his work was meeting soldiers in the field, fellow believers in the cause of their people's independence. Their faith and willingness to sacrifice inspired him, and so he always brought them encouragement. On this trip from Zamboanga the encouragement was inside his carry-on bag, two million pesos ($400,000), sent to him from Infitada Inc. by way of mutual friends in Indonesia. Encouragement that would lead to more bombs in the capital and more chaos to further destabilize Gloria's new government.

But it was nothing compared to the statement he planned to make in Honolulu in just a couple of days. The whole world would hear, and then they would begin to take his people seriously.



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



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