My Kind of Town
My Kind of Town
Picture this
>> Waimea Bay
Jake Peepers, P.I., was P.O.'d. Not one of the 50 digital images he'd shot at Turtle Bay of the philandering Victor Primitivo and a Japanese beauty half his age turned out. He bought the camera -- a tiny one that appeared to be the Oakley logo on the bridge of his shades, the shutter triggered by a hand-held device -- months ago and had taken plenty of good photos, damning photos of other cheating spouses, of a supermarket employee who was stealing steaks, of a bartender who served drinks and took the payment but failed to ring it up properly.
He was also mortified, having discovered his 50 frames of gray fuzz one by one in the presence of his client, Mrs. Meg Choy Primitivo.
The only good he could see was that, finally, he was here at Waimea Bay, at The Eddie, in time for the final heats -- and that he was following in the wake of the lovely, curvaceous Mrs. Primitivo, who wore a black swimsuit and pareau better than any woman of 40 he'd ever seen before.
And, omigod, he'd never seen waves like these, monstrous moving walls of water! According to the public address announcer they were now up to 28 feet! When they broke, the sound was like thunder, and the beach beneath his bare feet trembled. And now, instead of doing what any sane person would do -- which was to sit here on a towel with a chilled beverage and marvel at the waves, and ponder who or what created such beauty and power -- four young men in brightly colored vests were paddling out into those waves on boards constructed largely of styrofoam. Insanity can be so entertaining in other people.
Shouts and cheers went up then from the crowd gathered on the beach as the brave, mad foursome paddled out, and more than a few gasps. Peepers saw Mrs. Primitivo cross herself in front of her low-cut swimsuit, a tantalizing mixture of religion and cleavage. Hands tightly gathered at her lips, biting a thumb nail, she whispered a prayer that ended with "Please bless Chookie Boy." That would be Chookie Boy Kulolo, the young man in the yellow vest.
Impulsively, Peepers fired a shot of his client as she bowed her head. Another as she looked up, a single tear running down her right cheek. Another as she wiped it away. Another as she joined the crowd in shouting encouragement. They may have been the best photos Peepers ever shot, for she was a beautiful woman whose face showed a range of emotions from hurt to fear to hope.
Peepers pulled his laptop from his beach bag, downloaded the new images. The camera was now working fine. What the heck was going on?
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