Sunday Morning Cab Ride

"Aloha," was the word that kept running through his head.
Charlie stood on the curb, looking down the street for the taxi. He didn't ride in taxis much, but today seemed like the day to throw caution to the wind. He thought about the TV shows he had seen where the detectives used the cab driver's records to trace the suspect, usually with the cabbie giving a dead-on description of the guy they had mostly seen through a rear-view mirror. He thought again about where he had spent the night: The Highland Motor Inn, located about eight miles from his house. "My apartment, our apartment," Charlie reminded himself aloud.
Would Violet send the cops after him? He doubted it. Sometimes he left for a while, till things calmed down. When he came back she never acted relieved to see him, just more relaxed. But he had never been away for the night. He had always gone home before.
"Aloha," he murmured again and fingered the silk flower lei around his neck. He wasn't headed anywhere tropical; the lei had been an afterthought as he purchased the rest of his traveling clothes. The canary yellow shirt and white pants shouted a greeting from yards away, but the black bowler hat really set the whole ensemble off. He didn't wear socks, and for the first time in twenty six years Charlie was wearing shoes without laces. He guessed that the laces would just slow him down when he hit Reno.
Wasn't there something else he remembered about Reno? Didn't people go there to get quickie divorces back in the day? Violet would have laughed at that. You'd have to be married to get divorced, Chuck. Nobody else called him Chuck. Once upon a time, that felt like being treated special.
When he looked up again, the taxi was turning the corner. Charlie picked up his bag and met the driver coming around to the open trunk. He handed the bag over - the one he bought to carry his old clothes in, just in case - and smiled at the cabbie, "Aloha!"