My Kind of Town
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Lily Ah Sun could think of no bigger waste of time than doing the same work twice. But there was no avoiding it, not after that chubby slut -- or slutty chub? -- Gwen Roselovich took the photocopies Lily left for her cousin Quinn.
(Well, she'd thrown them at him in a jealous rage, but that was several emotions ago.) So here she was in the periodicals room, copying a second batch of news items about the Ah Sun clan from 1975 forward.
Her brother Laird, whom she'd dragged along, had protested at first when she asked him to check newspaper archives from 1974 back -- "Lily, I don't care about ancient history. I can't even remember what our uncle looks like!" -- but seemed to be finding some interesting stuff. At least he stayed busy for almost an hour copying various articles.
And he could have stayed longer, but Laird's whole reason for this unplanned trip home was to speak with his younger brother Lance, now that he was out of the coma, and tell him the good news that he could be cured of his gayness. Laird caught Lily's eye, pointed to the clock. Ten minutes 'til noon, when visiting hours began.
"So what did you find?" Lily said when they were outside, swapping stacks of photocopies.
From 1974, Laird had copied several items from Dave Donnelly's column about "popular entertainer Clarence 'Bobo' Ah Sun" performing here, sitting in there, and getting hired by an international cruise line to perform aboard its ships. There was a big story about their Uncle Mits, "a police officer assigned to the Pearl City station," chasing a prison escapee convicted of child molestation through a cane field and shooting and wounding him. There was also a wedding announcement for Grace Kealoha and Shitsuru Ah Sun, and a couple of months later a business page brief about a new venture started by Shitsuru Ah Sun, the Honolulu Soap Co.
Laird read with equal enthusiasm. "So who's this Bobo guy?"
"That's part of the mystery -- who was Bobo, why did he disappear, and what might that have to do with our father and his brother? It's like nobody wants to talk about Bobo, not our parents, not Uncle Mits. I called Donnelly, he said he hadn't heard anything about Bobo in years."
"So when did you start obsessing on the feud between our father and his brother?"
"I ran into our cousin Quinn." No sense getting into how she'd fallen for him big-time before she knew it was her cousin. "We, uh, started talking." Among other things.
"Oh yeah, I remember him." Laird was only 3 when their father and uncle quit speaking. "I think."
"He's changed." Oh, boy, had he ever.
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