My Kind of Town
A small world afterall
>> Royal Hawaiian Hotel
Emergency Shopping Session. Lily Ah Sun had used the term many times, always as a little joke and as justification for a shopping binge. Some people turned to food or drink for comfort. Lily turned to shopping.But this really was an emergency. When she arrived at the Royal Hawaiian with her maid Rosalita Resurreccion and her 6-year-old daughter Elizabeth, all they had was the clothes they wore and Lily's Gucci handbag. They'd left the house at Portlock in a hurry, and in an ambulance after Rosalita had been attacked, and it wasn't until they got to Queen's that Lily realized she couldn't sleep in her now bloody bedroom tonight, or maybe ever again. At least not alone. So here they were at the Royal for tonight anyway. After checking in they stopped at McInerny's just off the lobby and picked out oversize pink tees to sleep in tonight and a casual outfit for tomorrow. "Anybody else hungry?" Lily said as they exited McInerny's. None of them had dinner -- not after the attack on Rosalita, which was thankfully interrupted by Lily's cousin Quinn, but who was shot in the thigh by Rosalita's attacker and was now at Queen's.
"I am!" Elizabeth said.
So they walked down the hall to the Mai Tai Bar, where Lily saw a familiar face sitting alone at a table beside the beach, nursing a scotch.
"Hey, Chuck!" she called.
"Oh my gosh, Lily!" he said. "What a small world!"
"Smaller island," she replied. "What happened to you?"
Chuck Ryan was a tough guy, ex-military. It was obvious when Lily and her two best friends, the identical but very different twins Shauny and Fawn Nakamura, met him while working out at the Honolulu Iron Works this afternoon. But now from the way he was glowing, it looked like he'd just fallen in love. And the last time she'd seen him, Chuck had been with Fawn. "What do you mean, what happened?"
"I don't know, you just look different -- so happy!"
He blushed. "Is it that obvious?"
"I take it you and Fawn hit it off?"
"Apparently so. It's unbelievable." He was 51, a widower. Fawn was 27, still a virgin. Talk about the odd couple. "So what brings you to Waikiki?"
Lily wasn't ready to go over all the details again. "Oh, we had a little problem at my house."
Ryan noted the fresh bandages on Rosalita's cheek and temple. "Oh, I forgot to introduce you," Lily said. "This is my maid Rosalita Resurreccion and her daughter Elizabeth."
Resurreccion? The same last name of the guy Ryan's people were following. A small island indeed.
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