My Kind of Town
>> H-2, north-bound Look who’s talking
Handcuffs aren't so bad, Sen. Donovan Matsuda-Yee-Dela Cruz-Bishop-Kamaka thought, not if you can still smoke a doobie. Good thing the cops hadn't cuffed him behind the back. He took another hit, passed it to his right, to the bruddah pointing a .357 Magnum at him.
If he'd had been paying attention, the senator would have noticed how careful the driver of the gold Nissan van was in traffic. Doing the speed limit, right on the number, eyes on the lookout for potential trouble. This was no time to get pulled over for speeding or involved in a fender bender.
That's what did in a lot of guys who were involved in illegal stuff -- either through bad luck or more often stupidity, like that Willets dude. This van was stolen, as were the new-car paper license plates. There was the guy in the middle seat who they'd scooped out of an overturned HPD van back in town, thinking it was Isaac Kunia. The least of their illegalities were the buds and the ice and the pipes.
But the senator was high, so he wasn't paying attention -- not to where they were taking him, not to their guns, not to the looks they gave one another, not to the imminent danger to his own health.
"So what? You somebody, eh?" said the guy who was riding shotgun -- as he'd been in the SUV that had nabbed him from the HPD van before they switched vehicles. He seemed to be in charge.
"You read the newspaper much?" the senator said, taking the doobie back.
"Follow politics at all?"
"Naw, why bother?" he replied. "All those politician guys are crooks!"
>> Waialae Avenue
As TheBus 322 smoked up the hill, Kate looked back and saw the guy who'd been following her waiting at TheStop on the other side of the street. He looked at his watch impatiently. And walked away. He was leaving! Kate lovingly patted the expedition-size desert camouflage backpack on the seat beside her. Her new family was about to go home -- at last!
Kate got off at 6th, walked up to Harding, then back to her studio on 4th. And it was so exciting, so wonderful, for her and for her family there in their frames on the bookshelf as she opened the backpack and introduced their newest family members, one by one. There was laughter and tears all around as her new family went to join the others on the bookshelf.
But no sooner had they settled down than they started asking her for more family. Kate loved them and wanted them all to be happy. Fortunately she knew a place where she could adopt more family. First, though, they all needed naps.
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