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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
The chase
>> North Shore
Except for the sandals on their feet and the electronic dog collars around their necks, they ran naked through ohia forest clutching their blankets. Shauny earlier tried wrapping her blanket as a pareau, but it wasn't big enough. She'd tied the young Filipina's blanket around her, but as they ran it came loose and tripped the girl. The only thing that saved her from falling face-first into a jagged lava rock was Shauny's firm grip on her hand and a solid yank. And so they ran, Shauny, the girl and the handsome hapa college boy, as unaware of their nakedness as Adam and Eve before the snake came along with his big story about the apple. When you're getting shot at by men on horseback, and you've been told they're cannibals who perform ritualistic human sacrifice and like to eat their victims live, your sense of modesty is not exactly front of the mind.
And so they ran, unaware they were being watched.
"God, she's a beautiful creature," Clive the Aussie said, not looking up from the powerful field glasses.
"Yes," Victor Primitivo replied, that one syllable catching low and lusty in his throat, and speaking volumes. He too watched the trio running through light forest through binocs. "Look at her go."
He spurred his horse. Clive and Fariq the Saudi followed. The chase was on.
At her home on Waialua Beach Road, although Raydean Gonsalves didn't get nearly enough sleep, she glowed as she made Lono Oka'aina a big omelette with the works, including Portuguese sausage and kim chee.
If that wasn't enough to make a guy fall in love, the thin silky robe that clung to her was. She was a sturdy woman, the kind Lono liked.
Tall and lean, Lono wore only his jeans with the big western buckle. Raydean knew what she wanted and liked what she saw. "Take me to see the ranch, Lono." The way she said it, with that look in her eye, what she was really saying was take me to where I'm going to be living soon, because you need a woman to help run that ranch and I'm just the one who's going to do it.
"Let's go after breakfast."
"Shoots."
Given, for starters, the secrecy-in-perpetuity clause in the contract he'd signed with the hunt club renting his property, it was exactly the wrongest thing he could have said -- although in his defense it's not like Lono was the first guy who ever lost all logic and reason to a woman who seemed to delight in loving and feeding him well.
And so after breakfast and a pot of the best coffee Lono ever tasted, the new/old lovers showered and headed toward the Rockin' PIkake, and Raydean's new life.
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