My Kind of Town
>> Royal Hawaiian Hotel All about Lily
Lily Ah Sun got adjoining oceanview rooms for herself and her maid Rosalita Resurreccion and her daughter Elizabeth. She was amazed at how empty Waikiki was, strange at this time of year, and all because of the terror that had happened in New York and Washington, D.C., and Pennsylvania.
But tonight at her home in Portlock, they'd experienced their own kind of terror when a guy who had broken into the house tried to rape Rosalita as she changed the sheets on Lily's bed. Lily's cousin Quinn, an off-duty cop, stopped the attack, but Quinn had been shot in the thigh and lost a lot of blood, but he also shot the creep in the you-know-where so he'd never even think about raping anybody ever again. That's how they all ended up at the Queen's ER. And Lily's bedroom was such a bloody mess, there was no way she could sleep there tonight.
It all began this morning, on her way to work, when a motorcycle cop pulled her over for speeding on the H-1. And as the cop stood at her car window, they shared a look that lingered, and the world seemed to stop, and in that moment Lily knew that at last she'd found the man of her dreams. But then she gave him her driver's license, and he said her name, as if in shock. Without knowing it, she had fallen in love with her cousin Quinn, who she hadn't seen in 21 years, and he with her.
Then this afternoon, Lily had too much to drink because she was angry at her father, and she called Quinn. And on the way home, there in the moonlight at Maunalua Bay, they shared a kiss that left her breathless.
Quinn had pulled away, said they needed to be just cousins. But when they got to her home, she was showing Quinn her garden and they were on the verge of another kiss. That's when Rosalita started screaming and Quinn pulled a pistol from an ankle holster and ran inside.
It had been along, emotional day, and Lily needed to sleep. Tomorrow would be another big day. And as she waited for sleep to take her away, Lily knew two things in heart. When Quinn was released from Queen's, he was coming home with her. And Lily was going to make good on the vow she made to her father earlier tonight to find out what had happened that led her father and his brother to tear the family part. She didn't believe it had anything to do with money, like he said.
What Lily couldn't have guessed is that it had everything to do with her.
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