My Kind of Town
>> Honolulu Soap Co. Should have known it
It happens every day, but always to someone else's family. Until one day it happens to yours, and you find out that a brother or cousin or uncle is gay. So it was with the Ah Sun family.
"Well, I sort of suspected it," Lance said from Palo Alto.
"Lance was getting more and more obvious," their sister Lily said into the phone carved in the shape of a shama thrush.
"Dad said that the docs say Lance has chance of recovering."
"That's what I hear."
There was a moment of silence between the rival siblings.
"Hey, I hear good things about what you're doing with Ola Essences," Laird said. "I saw the piece in the Wall Street Journal."
That was precisely why their father should name Lily president of the parent Soap Company, because she had the experience. Instead, he'd confided, he was appointing Laird, the college boy. "Thanks," she said.
"Lily, listen, I've got a problem."
"You?!" What problem could anyone possibly have when they're about to graduate from Stanford Business with honors?
"Yeah, me. The real reason Dad called was to tell me that he's naming me president of the Soap Company. Immediately."
"Congratulations," she forced herself to say.
"No, that's the problem! A big one."
>> Queen's Medical Center
Nina Ramones was born to be a nurse. Her manner, her personality, her voice all conveyed to patients that she cared for them and that they would be getting better soon. And far more often than not, they did.
So Nina didn't hurry through her afternoon rounds, she was much too conscientious for that. But she was, shall we say, efficient in giving her care. Because she felt pulled, like a magnet to the North Pole, toward a certain room down the hall.
Her rounds completed, she knocked softly on that door, opened it, heard the TV tuned to ESPN. But patient Quinn Ah Sun was staring out the window, lost in thought, and at first didn't notice Nina.
"How are we doing?" she said softly.
"Better and better!" It was the sight of Nina that made Quinn feel much better. She was Florence Nightingale incarnate -- although Quinn couldn't be sure if Florence was built with Nina's curves and big, dark eyes.
"Nina, I've been thinking," he said, turning serious again. "Can you tell me who's visited me today."
"Of course," she said -- as if anyone could get past her notice! -- and named seven people, two of them twice.
"I should have known it!"
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