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My Kind of Town Don Chapman |
Sugar blues
>> Maui
Chez Paul in the seaside village of Olowalu was Cruz's favorite restaurant on Maui. Other places -- Longhi's, David Paul's, Haliimaile Store, Prince Court -- served food that was its equal in colorful ambiance. But what made Chez Paul so popular was Lucien. When Cruz finally arrived, Lucien was sitting at his favorite corner table, watching the room, while talking to a fellow whose back and long, blond ponytail were to the door. Lucien looked up, waved and stood.
"Monsieur MacKenzie, how nice to see you again. And I want you to meet my old partner, Stephen Stills. This is Cruz Mackenzie."
"Howzit?" the rock legend said. "That your real name?"
"Afraid so."
"Name like that, you ought to be in music, man. Sounds like a band."
Over a bottle of Chateau St. Andrews, they talked about Steven's recent pilgrimage to play the ancient golf courses of Scotland. It was pleasant, polite conversation, but Steven was edgy, distracted. Something was on his mind.
Cruz mentioned having played Waiehu and finding the green shorts that could have been the late Daren Guy's.
That's all Steven needed.
"I'm so pissed at these idiots ranting about a big shark hunt," Steven steamed. "It's all karma, man. Mana, as the Hawaiians say. If you're cool, they're cool. That is a fact. There's this one big old tiger shark, about 13 feet. I've seen her lots of times when we were diving for black coral. She always comes around, never bothers anybody. We knew she's a female because one time we watched her give birth to a dozen little pups. Cute as hell.
Anyway, we started calling her Uggums. I used to bring her fish. I don't know, maybe I was just narced out, but Uggums was always cool. And then this afternoon, I got a call that some jerkface fisherman killed Uggums. She was a beautiful creature, man, a beautiful creature!"
With that off his chest, Steven calmed down and they enjoyed a pleasant dinner and agreed to meet at Longhi's in Lahaina for a nightcap.
"By the way, got any white sugar?" Steven asked Lucien as he got up from the table.
"Don't tell anyone, but yes," Lucien said.
"Good, I need five pounds."
"Now?"
Steven got the sugar and rode with Lucien in his black BMW convertible. Cruz followed in his tan rental Ford as they made a side trip to the Lahaina boat harbor.
They turned off the headlights, got out of the cars, Steven carrying the bag of sugar on his shoulder. "That Portagee is going to pay."
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Don Chapman is editor of MidWeek. His serialized novel runs daily in the Star-Bulletin. He can be e-mailed at dchapman@midweek.com
