Everything under the sun and the moon seemed to be keeping me up tonight.
When I was putting together a ham sandwich for a late dinner, my son, David III, called to tell me he’d been accepted for residency back here in Honolulu at Queen’s Hospital. He’d be flying home next Monday. This was good news, for sure, and that added to the adrenaline punch running me around like a locomotive.
And tomorrow, who knew? From the time Sean Daniel’s L.A. flight touched down, we’d be working through the puzzle of secretly protecting an MI6 agent who might have people gunning for him. Maybe we’d all be caught in the crossfire. I might not live to see my son next week.
And then, geez, there was Kathy. It’s true, I lost my wife ten years ago. I should be over that, right? But I wasn’t. Maybe I never would be. Elaine had been not just my better half. She’d been my better whole. If that made any sense. We were two minds melded into a single body.
But you know, love, it’s such a strange emotion that seems to work independent of you. Not that I was in love with Kathy. If that were true, if it had been love at first sight way back in ninth grade, or if I’d fallen in love with her over the four years in high school, somehow or other, I’m sure she’d have ended up being a part of my life. I know it. But that wasn’t the way it worked out.
We were good friends back then. Great friends. Maybe I was just feeling the pull of that emotion. Is there an emotion attached to friendship the same as there’s one for love? One that strong? Some kind of all-consuming passion that’s not romantic? Had I ever had a friend I’d felt this way about as just a friend?
That was one puzzle I’m not sure all my police work would be able to solve.
I ate my sandwich while I half-watched Johnny Carson. It’s strange, the way we see TV here in Hawai‘i. Most shows are a week behind. The Tonight Show I was seeing now, Thursday night, was the show people over on the continent saw last week Thursday. Anything topical in his jokes would have been old news. When you were giving the show 100% attention, it was a kind of game. Listen for a joke about something in the news that happened last week and see if you remember it.
This is my life. If I get off work early enough to catch Carson, this is my intellectual life. An English major who barely read anymore. And if I did read, my mind was always racing, turning over cases. TV was easier. It shut my mind down and focused me.
But not tonight. My son, Sean Michael, and Kathy Sakaguchi. It was like my brain was practicing a juggling act, keeping three balls in the air. And doing it not so well.
And then there was this probable crime of passion killing up on Round Top. The four of us shifted all our cases to other people in the department, but that one, because it was so fresh, I couldn’t drop to easily. So throw in another ball. Do all four fall to the floor?
I poured myself a healthy dose of Jack Daniels and sat down to get back into Johnny Carson. I drank it not because it was the greatest whiskey, but because Elaine had always cooked with it.
Carson was doing my favorite, his Carnac the Magnificent routine. I could always picture the mayonnaise jar on Funk & Wagnalls’s porch where the envelopes concealing the secret answers to be divined were hidden. He had great writers. The Carnac jokes hardly ever missed. And when they did, well Carson was the master of working a good joke out of a flop.
Yeah, if it went wrong, Carson always had a way to deal with it. Yes.
I turned off the TV and thought about Sean Michael. Our plan sounded good. If the four of us were on our game, we’d handle this, no problem. But what if these people who wanted him dead were following a well-conceived plan that was a bit better than ours?
The phone rang. It was Kathy.
“Hey, stranger, long time no see. How have you been?”
I had to laugh. Looking up at the clock, I saw it had been three hours since my almost some kind of something like a date.
“Life’s been good,” I said. “And you?”
“Oh, I’ve been dealing with insomnia for a while.”
“Uh huh, I know that feeling. Hey, can I ask you a favor?”
“Sure, as long as it doesn’t involve borrowing a cup of sugar. I don’t use the stuff.”
“Hah. That’s exactly what I wasn’t going to ask for,” I said, “so thank goodness you told me before I wasted time asking.”
“It’s true, David. Even if neither of us believes in it, I must be psychic, right?”
“Right right. Hey, but seriously, Kathy. What’s your work schedule like tomorrow?”
Lanning Lee 