Mas nodded. He knew well what trouble Haneda could cause. But was that the same kind of trouble the woman was talking about?
The mistress returned to the kitchen and opened her refrigerator. Smelling packages of wrapped raw chicken and white boxes of Chinese food, she hurled some food into the garbage can before pulling out a long, rectangular bottle of yam wine.
Mas was confused, but somehow he fit into the confusion. He unfolded the receipt from the envelope. On the blank side was a map written with a crude hand. There was a square for a building and then a Los Angeles address on Second Street. Mas checked the intersection. Little Tokyo, blocks away from the chop suey house he once frequented.
Mas stuffed the strange map deep into his jeans pocket and returned the envelope to the kitchen table. The mistress sat down and poured the clear liquid into two cups filled with ice.
Shochu,
she said. From my hometown.
Mas declined. He didnt like drinking that stuff. It gave him a mean headache, and he needed to think clearly right now.
The woman took a long sip of the yam wine and pulled the sunglasses off her head. So, how do you know Joji? From his Little Tokyo days?
Mas nodded.
You better be careful. Hes not right in the head right now. The ice in the womans glass clinked as she finished off her drink. She then started on the other one.
Whatcha mean?
He left me in Las Vegas. Right there in the casino. Said he had to go to the toilet. Then never came back.
Didnt say anytin?
Well. The woman circled the rim of the glass with her finger. We did get into a fight.
You fight?
You know, at first it was all fun, exciting. We go to Las Vegas or Laughlin, and he would keep going and going craps, blackjack, whatever. Id keep stacking those chips up, higher and higher. Keep on, keep on, I tell him. Trade them in for hundred-dollar chips, two hundred dollars. Can you believe one piece of wood could be worth five hundred dollars? The woman finished the second drink and waited for Mas to pour her another. When we went to the strip, the hundred-dollar tables, the people didnt take us serious. Thought we were just
nandemonai mono,
trash. But Joji-
san
would take out those bills, and they all changed their minds.
The woman cupped the glass as if it were a wounded bird. But he kept going. Like he couldnt stop. Like if he stopped, something terrible would happen. That night I told him to stop. Take a rest. It wasnt fun anymore.
Mas licked his lips. They were dry again, and he suppressed the urge to drink some of the wine.
I thought the whole point of him coming to Los Angeles was to spend more time with me. But I could tell that it was for something else. What, Joji? Id ask him.
The mistress emptied her glass while Mas traced his finger around a dark spot, probably spilt soy sauce, on the tablecloth. I know what people were saying about us, about me. That I was only with him to get a green card. But it wasnt like that. Really. We were close, like brother and sister. I knew things about him that you all could never even imagine.
Mas felt a coldness on the back of his neck.
The mistress must have sensed his reaction, because she turned away abruptly. You just like the rest of them. You believe what you want to believe.
Mas stayed silent for a good minute. So when youzu gonna see Joji again? he finally asked.
Who knows? Who cares? The mistress poured more yam wine into her glass. Im going back to Japan, you know.
Oh, yah? Mas waited, but the womans long eyelashes, coated with black flakes, began to flutter. Mas knew that within ten minutes, the mistress, Junko Kakita, would be fast asleep beside her empty bottle. There wasnt too much more Mas could get from her right now. She wasnt letting on, but Mas knew she had the key to why Joji Haneda was in Los Angeles County. He excused himself and left the apartment, the map still in his pocket.
Mas sat in his truck for a while before leaving North Hollywood. What was Haneda into now? Drugs? It would be nothing new. Mas remembered Haneda happily supplying young
chinpira
wanna-be gangsters with syringes of heroin and homemade alcohol made from car gasoline. But that was back then, when war orphans had little choice for survival. Whoever heard of a seventy-year-old drug dealer, anyhow? Haneda had the nursery, pretty successful, at least from all accounts at the lawn mower shop. To risk it all for more money didnt make sense.
Mas wiped away some sweat from his forehead when he saw a figure crossing the street. Skinny, wizened, almost bent over, and wearing a baseball cap.
Haruo, Mas called out from the open window. The figure turned and then scurried back to the other side. Mass eyes stung from his sweat. He leapt out of the truck and then ran to the corner. It was all quiet, aside from a homeless man pushing a grocery cart filled with flattened cardboard boxes. It had been Haruo, hadnt it? Or was Mas just seeing things in the brown haze of North Hollywood?
Gotta get outta here, muttered Mas to himself. He needed to get where he belonged back to San Gabriel Valley and his customers.
In L.A., there were two kinds of customers. One was the short-term ones, who basically wanted a mow and blow, a clip of side hedges, and an occasional spray of insecticide. They were usually young or on the move and jumped from one house to another. You couldnt count on these people, but work was work. Mas looked at them like extra change you find in the corners of your pocket.
The other kind of customer was the lifer, the one you actually tried to hang on to. They gave hundred-dollar Christmas bonuses, plus maybe a box of Sees chocolate candy or a small trinket for Mari. They had large estates in shady neighborhoods of oak trees and ARMED RESPONSE signs. Get a couple of customers like these, and you know that youve finally made it.
At the height of Mass career, he had a half a dozen of these customers. Hollywood doctors, actors, big businessmen. But now there was only one. Mrs. Witt. When Mas first worked at the San Marino estate, there were two Witts, the missus and the mister, a tight end for the old Rams football team. As the misters sports career began to fizzle out, his sex life grew, and he eventually left the missus for a
Playboy
centerfold. That was when Mrs. Witt became obsessed with her grove of fruit trees in the back of the house.
With a saw and a knife the size of an apple slicer, she attacked each tree, cutting off branches and creating monstrous tree figures that looked like mutilated fingers. Mas was afraid. Who knew what a rejected middle-aged
hakujin
woman would do next? But then he noticed that she was attempting to do some amateur grafting. With Mass help, she attached different kinds of branches to the stumps, mixing a lemon with a tangerine, an American persimmon with a Japanese variety. Wrapping each wound with wax, string, or tape, Mas and Mrs. Witt became medics in the orchard recovery unit.
Not all of the grafts were successful. Sometimes a stump would reject a branch, and Mas would find a broken branch lying forlornly on the ground. This upset Mrs. Witt to no end. She would curse and sometimes even scream, muttering the name of her ex-husband.
Mr. Witt had been an immense man who almost filled the entire doorway of his San Marino home. His sandy-colored hair was almost the same shade of his skin, a bland background for his round, sunken eyes the color of blue slate.
Most of his customers mailed their checks in, but Mr. Witt had insisted that Mas come to the door on the last Friday of the month. Mas often felt like Maris dog, Brownie, waiting for leftovers from their grilled teriyaki steak dinner.
One day Mr. Witt handed Mas the usual cream-colored check and an additional treat, two tickets imprinted with the blue-and-yellow swirl of the Rams.
Sank you. Mass fingerprints left green stains on the tickets. He preferred UCLA basketball on television, but it wouldnt be bad to go to a Rams football game once in his life.
Wait a minute, Mr. Witt said, disappearing from the doorway for a moment. You have a son, right?
No, girl. Mari.
Well, she may like these anyway. Mr. Witt brought out three black-and-white photos of himself in uniform. There was a posed shot of him, knee down on the field, helmet at his feet. In a candid shot, he was snarling as he blocked a defensive guard. Finally, a full head shot, his sandy hair teased up and eyes shining like marbles.
Mr. Witt unfastened the top of a permanent ink marker with his teeth and scrawled on each photo: To Mary, Good Luck and Good Playing, Bob Witt.
Chizuko wasnt sure if they should let Mari go to the game: After all, she would be missing Japanese school, held every Saturday in a bare two-story building next to a nursery.
Mari herself didnt seem that excited. It was night, and she was wearing her headgear, apparently one of the last stages of her orthodontic work. A hideous contraption, the headgear had hooks and bands that tightened around her skull and stretched down to her metal braces. She pulled her long hair out from underneath the bands into rectangular sections, hanging spongy curlers from the loose strands.
Even when Mari remained unresponsive, Mas insisted. Mr. Witt give to me. An insult if we no use.
Get one of your friends. How about Haruo? Chizuko said, cutting out an article on high school SAT scores in the
Los Angeles Times
.
No. Mari.
But she has perfect attendance so far.
Mari clipped the last curler in place. Who cares, Mom? Its not like real school.
On the day of the game, Mas bought everything. He purchased the three-dollar color program, Rams banners, hot dogs cotton candy, even.
Mari didnt seem that interested in the game. She instead kept adjusting her hair, which rippled in lines where her headgear was positioned at night.
Mas tried to get excited about the game. But the plastic seats seemed too hard, the sun too bright, and the men in front of him drank too much. They yelled and hooted at the cheerleaders, analyzing the merits of each one. The Rams werent doing so well, either; balls were intercepted or else thrown out of bounds, hitting the green field beyond the chalk lines.
It had been easier to be with Mari when she was younger, around five or six. When Mas brought home an old Cinderella book that hed found in a customers trash can, her face brightened. She ran into her bedroom, reciting the story of the two evil stepsisters and the mice that helped the poor servant girl.
At Christmastime, she waited for Mas to come home with cheap gifts wrapped in red-and-white paper, gifts of fruitcake and chocolate-covered almonds from his customers. She didnt care that inside was just junk; she still arranged the presents under the flocked Christmas tree as if they were treasures of real gold and silver.
But as she grew, her breasts peaked, her
mensu
started, and she became more and more distant, a stranger with secrets behind her bedroom door.
They left the game early. As they turned back onto McNally Street, Mas parked the Datsun in the driveway, behind the Ford truck.
Oh, wait a minute, he said, going into the garage. Here, he gave you this. The three black-and-white photos with the personalized message.
He spelled my name wrong. And he wasnt even very good. Mari frowned, flattening a bump in her hair. She left the photos on the car seat. Eventually Chizuko found them on the floor, underneath the car mat, and stored them in a box with other old photos that they knew they had, but never saw.
