My Kind of Town
>> Queen's Medical Center Foggy windows
What she saw in her father's black Cadillac was so shocking, it made Lily Ah Sun forget the search for her own misplaced car. Inside the big car was her father and Uncle Mits. They were hugging each other and her father was sobbing. Lily felt guilty as a spy and tried to look away, but couldn't, and tears of happiness started in her eyes too. It had taken something awful -- their sons being hospitalized here at the same time -- but at last the feud between the brothers Ah Sun was ending, and so she and Quinn could be together openly. Well, once they got past the cousin thing. Omigosh, the brothers Ah Sun were starting to fog up the windows!
>> "Go back upstairs and act like a husband for your wife," HPD Sgt. Mits Ah Sun said, disentangling from his brother Sheets. "She needs you more than ever now. And you need to act as normal as possible and forget what you saw in Waimanalo this morning."
Sheets wiped the last tear from his cheek, nodded, sat up straighter. "You're right." The samurai mentality the brothers learned from their maternal grandfather, Ginza Matsuo, was kicking in again.
>> Lily saw her Uncle Mits opening his door and she ducked behind a red Durango. She would give the brothers this moment in private, and never mention it to them.
Hey, over there! Down the ramp, parked with a prime view of the H-1, Lily saw her teal BMW! She'd just wait for the brothers to depart.
>> Kapiolani Boulevard
As the van driven by Wilhemina Orlando turned right onto Atkinson Drive, Muhammed Resurreccion's attention was diverted from the Convention Center, where the electronics trade show would take place, to a report on the radio, tuned to the news channel per his request.
American special forces, the radio announced, were on the ground in the jungles of Mindanao actively working with the Philippine Army in the war against Muhammed's people. Hmmm. Muhammed was about to take his people's war to America, but this upped the stakes.
And now they couldn't say he started it.
It was all his driver Wilhemina Orlando could do not to gulp, or otherwise betray her true feelings. Which were decidedly different from Muhammed's. But she saw an opportunity to strengthen their new relationship, to further gain his trust.
"I think," she said tentatively, "the Americans are making a mistake."
Muhammed began to admire Wilhemina for more than her femininity.
"I think," he said with a dark smile, "that you are right."
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