My Kind of Town
>> Kalanianaole Highway Stay on the bus
As they passed Aina Haina, Laird Ah Sun was raving to his big sister Lily about the book "Jesus Was a CEO: The Gospel of Acquisitions" and how it changed his life, and that's why he was following the author, Christian X.O. St. James, to share his teachings with the mujahadeen of Afghanistan.
"And he has a new book out. That's why I need to talk with Lance. That's why I came home. When Mom left a message that he was out of the coma, and after you'd told me that our brother is gay -- I had to share the message in St. James' new book."
"Which is titled?"
"'Jesus Was Straight, Mister: And You'd Better Be Too!' Lily, it proves that being gay is an illness that can be cured!"
"Little brother, when was the last time I decked you?"
>> Pahoa Avenue
HPD Detective Sherlock Gomes let TheBus get a block ahead before he turned from 16th Avenue and followed in his green 1971 Barracuda. If the woman with the lumpy desert camouflage backpack had indeed burglarized one of his neighbors -- the backpack had been empty 15 minutes earlier -- he wanted to know where she got off TheBus and where she went.
He was hesitant to stop her, flash the badge and ask to see the contents of the backpack -- not after a patrolman was sued for harassment because he pulled over a guy who was weaving in traffic and asked him to take a field sobriety test. In fact he was having a bad reaction to prescription medication, took offense and found a lawyer happy to sue HPD.
Kate sat in the back of TheBus. She lived a detached life, withdrawn from the world, but watched it carefully. Certifiably paranoid, she spent a lot of time looking back. And so she saw the green car following her TheBus.
Earlier she'd seen the same car stop and its male driver jump out and race into a house that was just three doors down from the house that she would enter through a side window and leave through the front door. It followed as TheBus turned right at Kokohead, waited while she transferred to the No. 1, and followed again as No. 1 headed down Waialae.
Kate patted the backpack on the seat beside her, felt the sharp edges of picture frames, caressed them like children. Somehow she sensed that the man in the green car could take away her new family here in the backpack. And somehow she knew that what she had done, well, some people wouldn't like it and there would be trouble if they found out. So when TheBus stopped at 4th Avenue, her stop, she stayed on.
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