My Kind of Town
Welcome home
>> Kalanianaole Highway
As traffic crept toward town, Lily Ah Sun had the windows up on her teal BMW, AC on, new Mauka Showers CD cranking, ignoring the nutcase hanging out the car to her right, waving and yelling as the driver honked. It was true, Lily thought, you can drive a mile and never see anybody as sane as you are.
Then she heard her name. Oh God, this wasn't Jerry again, was it? He hadn't bothered her in over a year. She absolutely was not looking over. Traffic was thick, no place to run, so all Lily could do was stare grimly ahead at the rear of a smoking TheBus.
And then the other car started inching into her lane, trying to cut her off, and Lily got mad. She reached for her cell phone, punched in 911. She'd need to identify the creep, and the car, maybe get a license number.
Lily glanced over and what she saw was so shocking, she stared and probably would have rear-ended TheBus if the guy hanging out of the backseat window, hadn't frantically pointed ahead. She jammed the brakes and stopped 4 inches short of TheBus.
What the heck was her brother Laird doing here? He was supposed to be in Palo Alto, preparing to graduate from Stanford Business with a masters degree.
Laird shoved a wad of cash at the cabbie and, grinning broadly, jump out carrying an overnight bag. Lily unlocked the doors and Laird tossed his bag in the back seat just as traffic started moving again.
"Surprise, surprise," he said, giving her a cheek-to-cheek.
Lily was stunned. "What's wrong? Why ..."
"Lance." Their younger brother, who'd finally come out of the coma. "And I have to tell Dad the news." That instead of taking over the family-owned Honolulu Soap Co., as planned, he wanted to go to Afghanistan and teach the gospel and capitalism to the mujahadeen. "But mostly it's Lance, because of what you told me."
Well, this was going to be interesting. Laird the closet homophobe coming to terms with his gay brother.
>> 16th Avenue
One of her odd jobs was delivering phone books, and Kate remembered this home well. The lonely old couple, Mr. and Mrs. Yim, had wanted to talk, which was how she learned that every Tuesday and Friday morning the husband took the wife for dialysis. Kate had seen their wall of family photos, and how easy it would be to break in through the glass jalousies on the side of the house.
Now Kate's heart raced with happiness as she took the photos down from their shelves and lovingly lay them in her backpack. Her family was just growing and growing.
Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek.
His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin
with weekly summaries on Sunday.
He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com