My Kind of Town
My Kind of Town
Not so sweet 16
>> Queen's Medical Center
Quinn Ah Sun jotted the number down and thanked the computerized voice that had given it to him. He set the phone back in its cradle, not ready yet to call the number.
Sixteen years, he thought. Sixteen years since Flo Kajiyama Ah Sun left Hawaii to fulfill her dream of being a professional gambler in Las Vegas. Sixteen years since he'd seen his mother. What was another anxious minute or three?
Quinn was just 11 then and didn't understand. So when she'd called, he told his dad to say he wasn't home. When she sent cards and money, he didn't reply, just as he didn't to the invitation to visit her in Vegas. After a while, the calls stopped. Cards came only on his birthday. They still did. That told him, if nothing else, that his mother was trying in her way to keep open a line of communication, now matter how tenuous. At least he understood that now. When you're 11, and for years later, all you know is that your mother walked out on you and your dad.
Was it any wonder that Quinn wanted to be a tough guy like his father Mits and followed him into HPD? Was it any wonder that despite his handsome hapa looks and his tall, muscular build he had a hard time trusting women?
He stared at the phone, at the number. Sixteen years and counting. But he couldn't wait forever. It was possible that his mother knew something about the mysterious Bobo Ah Sun, and what he might have to do with the rift between Quinn's father and his uncle Sheets. He picked up the phone, dialed the number in area code 702, held his breath.
>> This was just going to be a short visit, Sheets Ah Sun thought as the elevator stopped on his son Lance's floor. Sheets had to get home and finish packing before flying out on the red eye for his son Laird's graduation from Stanford Business. It would be the happiest day of Sheets' life, and at the celebration dinner afterward he would announce that Laird was being named president of the Honolulu Soap Co.
Sheets knocked on Lance's door. The last time he'd been here, so had Lance's boyfriend Greg. Sheets didn't want to walk in during the middle of something he didn't need to see.
"Come in!" a chorus called.
Sheets pushed the door open, saw his wife Grace, Lance, his daughter Lily and a guy who looked a lot like ...
"Hey, Pops!"
"Laird, what are you doing here?! You're supposed to be ..."
"I had to see Lance. And I have some news."
Lily knew what it was. As a rule she tried to avoid ground zero nuclear detonations. "I gotta go."
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