My Kind of Town
My Kind of Town
>> Marco Polo Salad days
Setting the three framed postcards on the front seat of her teal BMW, Lily Ah Sun called Queen's on her cell and asked for her cousin Quinn's room -- no, she had to stop thinking of him like that. He was not, as they'd just learned, her cousin after all, which they'd believed for the 27 years of their lives. But Quinn's line was busy. Lily fought back pangs of jealousy. She was not the only female on the island who wanted to be with him.
Kind of like Bobo. He was still a mystery, but one thing was clear from these three postcards -- each mentioned him hooking up with a different woman. The wahine liked Bobo, and Bobo liked them.
But if that much was consistent, why was the hand that penned the final postcard from Miami not the same hand that wrote the earlier cards from Alaska and Panama?
>> MGM Grand -- Las Vegas
It was Flo Kajiyama Ah Sun's favorite, the tomato, fresh basil and buffalo mozzarella salad with balsamic vinaigrette at Wolfgang Puck's. She often came here for dinner even if she'd be gambling at another casino later, just for the salad. Different colors, textures, tastes -- a little piece of art that happened to be quite nutritious. At least, the salad and a slice of French bread would keep Flo going into the a.m. hours.
The salad was good tonight, but different. Not in the way it was prepared, but in the way she tasted it. Part of her was celebrating that the son she hadn't seen in 16 years had called. Part of her was scared. Quinn had not called because he wanted to renew their relationship, but because he wanted to know about Bobo Ah Sun.
There were things about Bobo that Flo knew. Others she just suspected very strongly. She'd told Quinn and his cousin Lily a little about how Bobo came to be an Ah Sun, then she had to go, said she'd call back later.
Flo washed down the last bite of bread swabbed in balsamic vinaigrette with warm tea, left way too much of a tip. But it was part of her belief that if you gave money away, the money god would send more your way.
Her beliefs also included a system for choosing where to gamble based largely on astrology, feng shui and her time of the month. All of which pointed to a big night for her at the MGM this evening.
But first there was a call to make. Flo walked outside, stood beneath the big lion, called the number Quinn had given her for his room at Queen's, feeling like she was on a big roulette wheel, waiting to see what came up.
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