My Kind of Town
My Kind of Town
>> Queen's Medical Center Call an electrician!
We run on electricity, the juice of life, and like any appliance the human body can only take so much current at once. And power surges can be as deadly to an old, overloaded string of Christmas tree lights as to a Hawaiian-Chinese-Japanese businessman who has way too damn much on his mind.
Sheets Ah Sun's circuitry was already at max ampage as he and his son Laird sat down in the lobby, what with the state Health Department, Sherlock Gomes and even his daughter Lily and nephew Quinn poking around in things that were buried 21 years ago. Then his youngest son Lance was injured at the hate crimes bill rally and, turned out, the boy had been gay all these years. Plus, Lily was agitating for change at the Honolulu Soap Co.
But Sheets was handling, no problem, and besides Laird's graduation from Stanford Business would be the happiest day of his life. And he could hardly wait to see the look on his face when Sheets broke the news that he was naming Laird president of the Soap Co.
"By the way, son, when're you flying back for the graduation. I'm on the red-eye tonight."
"That's what I have to tell you. I'm not going to be at the ceremony."
Power surge, and the little guys in Sheets internal electric company, seeing the watt, volt and amp needles jump into the red zone, took emergency action, releasing a burst of the daily St. Joseph baby aspirin they'd been stockpiling.
But then Laird launched into a rapid-fire monologue, knowing that if he stopped for even a moment his father would jump in with anger and arguments, and Laird told of a classmate turning him on to a book, "Jesus Was A CEO: The Gospel of Acquisitions," and how it totally changed the way he looked at life and, more importantly, at business, and he'd discussed it with this classmate and the professor who'd turned him onto the book, and found that the author Christian X.O.
St. James was leading a mission to Afghanistan to teach Christianity and, more importantly, Capitalism to the mujahadeen, and well, just last week Laird turned down a management position with T-Rex
Consulting and another offer from Guttheearth Mining & Exploration, and had signed up to spend two years in Afghanistan, the plane was leaving day after tomorrow and he had too many things to do to bother with the marching in a graduation ceremony and ..."
Laird paused to take a breath and, sure enough, his father did have something to say.
"Hackf-frkh," Sheets said, clutching at his chest as the little guys dodged sparks and ran for cover. "Kfkhr..."
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