My Kind of Town
Call from Muhammed
>> Portlock
It was not, Lily Ah Sun decided through the tears, better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Talk about canard-in-a-crock. If she had never loved Quinn, she would not have to go through the rest of her life knowing that she'd met the only perfect man for her in the world, and that she would never see him again.
"Oh, Miss Ah Sun," Lily heard behind her. "Just in time. And I think you'll be very excited with what ..."
That's when interior designer Jenna Takara, breezing down the hallway into the living area, realized that her client was sobbing on the shoulder of her maid, Rosalita Resurreccion, the maid's little daughter clinging to Lily's hip.
"Oh, uh, I ..." Jenna said, flummoxed. Bubbly and upbeat, Jenna did not do trauma well, neither her own nor other people's. "I'm, uh, so sorry."
Lily turned from Rosalita, the girl Elizabeth still holding on. "Oh, Jenna, hi," Lily said, wiping away her tears. "I'm OK, really."
"Oh, good," Jenna said, brightening, and diving back into the reason she was here: recreating a new bedroom after the all-white one was shot up and bloodied last night. "Hard woods! I think that's what we need in the bedroom. Hard woods! Masculine, for the new man in your life. Yet naturally elegant. And done in complementary hues, like you and your love."
Lily's tears ebbed, her anger washed back in. "No hard woods," she said, although that exactly described Quinn. "No more new man."
"Oh," Jenna said, stunned. All that work for nothing, even if she was billing by the hour. "So, what did you have in mind then?"
"Gray and somber, like a nunnery."
Eeeyu. Jenna was afraid her client was not making a joke.
The phone rang, and Rosalita gladly withdrew to answer it.
Lily heard Rosalita answer, then exclaim "Mabuhay!" and burst into a torrent of Tagalog.
After a moment, grinning ear to ear, Rosalita turned to Lily and Elizabeth, holding her hand over the mouthpiece.
"Elizabeth, it's your Uncle Muhammed! He's here in Honolulu and wants to come see us."
Lily had already given her OK for Muhammed Resurreccion, cousin of Rosalita's late husband Jesus and the person who had arranged for her work visa, to come out for a visit.
Lily nodded at Rosalita. "Now is as good of a time as any."
Rosalita spoke a bit more Tagalog, hung up the phone. "Muhammed is here for a computer convention," she said by way of explanation.
But as usual, Muhammed Resurreccion had spoken only half the truth.
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