Are You Seeing Me? (13 page)

I can think now. I can dig the ninjas’ shrapnel out of my skin, line them up on the ground, view them as a problem to solve. Almost immediately, the answer rises high and flicks its tail.

Set her free.

Perry Richter saves the day—that is the future.

And the future is now.

No lie.

I look toward Ogopogo one final time, hoping to whisper a thank-you. He is no longer there. The splashes on the dock have dried up. The surface of the lake is a sheet of glass. The hawk still circles above.

Jus’s grief is a feather. I fall forward onto my stomach.

I START PLANNING DURING OUR journey to Seattle.

Justine doesn’t do much other than drive, just as she didn’t do much other than watch TV last night. She wears sunglasses all day, even when we’re inside. On the road, she keeps the car’s satellite radio tuned to the “Nineties on Nine” station. When she does speak, it’s a quote from the classics she likes to read:

“It isn’t what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.”

“Know your own happiness. Want for nothing but patience—or give it a more fascinating name: Call it hope.”

“Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant…A woman especially, if she have the misfortune of knowing anything, should conceal it as well as she can…”

At the United States border crossing, she sniffles, blows her nose. When the officer asks if she’s okay, Justine blames it on allergies. The officer gives a pretend smile and tells us to enjoy our stay. Passing the Tulalip Resort, Justine swears and bangs her hands five times on the steering wheel. Near Seattle’s big stadiums—Safeco Field for baseball and CenturyLink Field for football—she pulls off her rubber band and throws it out the window. I don’t mind the lack of conversation or social interaction. They’re great during an adventure, but this is no longer an adventure. This is a rescue, like the one following the 1993 Los Angeles earthquake, when a street sweeper was pulled out of the collapsed Northridge Center and its six-meter-high pancake stack of a car park.

To set my sister free, I must make her afraid. Not for a week or a day, just for a few hours. It won’t be pretty, especially after her freak-out over the swimming note at the Pacifica West Hotel. I can see her reaction. Panic will appear on her face: lines on her forehead, big eyes, color in her cheeks and neck, incisor teeth biting into the bottom lip. Her heart will pound. Her breathing will be shorter, quicker. Her stomach will be full of butterflies. Her mind and her feet will race.

It won’t be a simple procedure for me, either. I will be very nervous. Alone in a large American city, wandering streets only seen before on a map, having to talk to total strangers with TV accents. It will unnerve me for sure. But I will find solutions to any problems that come up because I won’t have my sister to rely on. I will be Master Disaster, brave and strong.

I have two possible options—the visit to Bruce Lee’s grave on Saturday and the visit to Pike Place Fish Market on Sunday. So the next day I do my homework on both, scoping out the locations, listing surrounding landmarks, studying routes to the closest police station. Twice during the evening Jus asks me what I’m up to. I tell her I am investigating the twin tragedies of Bruce Lee’s death and his son Brandon Lee’s death and the claim by some people that there is a curse on the family name.

“Wonderful subject,” she says with a voice I know is sarcastic. “Lives snuffed out just when they were getting started.”

She sighs. She’s doing that now instead of quoting her classics. A small flutter sometimes appears in her right eyelid. If she were feeling better, she would remember I’m not hardcore into Bruce Lee. I like his movie
Enter the Dragon
, and I like that he was an inspiration for the teenage Jackie Chan when they filmed
Fist of Fury
, and I think his unfortunate death from a cerebral edema is an interesting first-aid mystery. And there is no doubt he was super fit and an amazing martial artist. But there are negative things about Bruce Lee too. He only ever made one good movie. He didn’t do movies in English. He didn’t make jokes—he wasn’t funny in the slightest. In fact, he looked either serious or angry pretty much all the time. Jus knows where I stand on Bruce Lee. If she were feeling better, she would suspect I was researching something else, something I didn’t want her to know about.

ON SATURDAY MORNING, DRIVING TO Lakeview Cemetery, I decide I will make my sister afraid during the visit to Pike Place tomorrow. When we arrive at Lot 276—the location of Bruce and Brandon Lee’s graves—I know for sure I made the right choice. Looking around Lakeview, a number of factors would’ve created problems. The crowd is small. The cemetery has a lot of open space, with the headstones providing the only decent cover. And because it is a place of sadness and silence, there is not much noise or activity to be a distraction.

On the way back to the car, Justine asks me what I thought of it. I tell her the graves were very well maintained, the marble shone, and all the flowers were fresh rather than withered. And, no lie, I thought there would be more Asian people present.

“Great. It was a disappointment.”

“No, it was different. Quiet and open and not very crowded.”

She folds her arms. “I thought you’d prefer it that way?”

I shrug, knowing on this day, nothing could be further from the truth.

“PEZ, I DON’T KNOW IF you understand, because I’ve been such a downer lately—if you don’t, I just want to make absolutely sure—the thing with Marc had nothing to do with you.”

Justine is beside me, her arm looped through mine. Her left leg is tucked in beside my right, hip to ankle, as if preparing for a three-legged race. We are at the Pike Place Fish Market, waiting for the men in the orange overalls—the world-famous fish throwers—to be funny and entertaining. The crowd builds with each minute. The area in front of the counter is packed. A section of cobblestoned street behind is also filling up. There is a lot of noise—people talking loudly, laughing, car engines revving and idling, a faraway siren, a whistle, a man shouting about a passage from the Bible. There is plenty of movement too—mostly slow-walking visitors on the street, looking at the different shops and stalls. Some are quicker, like the ponytailed man on a segway and the older couple wearing matching American-flag tracksuits and riding a tandem bike.

“You weren’t to blame,” says Jus.

“Duh,” I reply.

She laughs and squeezes my arm. She is relieved. I am the opposite of relieved. I am counting breaths and trying to keep them evenly spaced. Normally, humming or squeezing my fists or running my hands up and down my thighs would help settle me. But Justine knows they are my calming behaviors, and even though I have good excuses for feeling anxious—the sounds, close strangers, the smells of fish and candle wax and paint—I want her to think I am handling the situation well.

I wish she would let go of my arm.

Justine looks at her watch, makes a sucking noise with her lips. “This show must be kicking off soon, hey?”

“They don’t do shows,” I reply.

“What’s that?”

“I researched Pike Place Fish Market and they don’t do set shows, not like a circus or a theme park. They just serve customers. They make people feel good by being excellent servants.”

“And through airborne fish.”

“Of course. That’s what made them well known. That was their mission.” I point to the shop logo, which has an orange banner with the words
WORLD FAMOUS
written on it. “They achieved that. They now have a different mission—world peace.”

“World peace?”

“Yes. It says so on their website.”

“They want to achieve world peace by tossing a few mullet around?”

“I don’t think they have mullet. They mainly throw salmon.”

One of the orange overalls—a thick man with acne scars and a handlebar mustache—laughs with a lady wearing very large hoop earrings and a purple Washington Huskies sweater. Looking around the crowd and the passersby, I see Huskies clothing everywhere—T-shirts and tank tops and trackpants. One girl has some very short shorts with
WH
printed on the bum. I also notice groups of Washington State Cougars fans wearing red. I wish I had college sport merchandise—it would’ve been much easier to blend in.

Justine looks at her watch again. “We don’t have to stay here long if you don’t want to.”

I jerk my head, causing my cap to tilt sideways. My breath count starts over.

“You okay?”

“I…I am fine.”

“You sure?”

“I am fine, Just Jeans.” I give her the widest smile I can manage.

“Okay, Pez, okay. I believe you,” she says, patting my forearm. “Keep the teeth fillings to yourself.”

There are a number of places I could make a getaway, but the fish market is the best opportunity. It has the crowd, the noise, and there are excellent escape routes and hideouts close by. And it possesses one special way to make sure Justine’s focus is elsewhere.

“You’re going to buy a fish so you can catch it, aren’t you?” I ask.

Jus turns her head and leans back a little.“What…me?”

“Yes.”

“I thought the guys who work in the shop did all the throwing and catching.”

“No. The customers also do it. Customers like you.”

Justine pulls a sour-taste face and rubs the back of her neck with her free hand. “I don’t know, Pez. It was hard enough catching a basketball at school, let alone a barramundi.”

“You don’t have to worry about catching a barramundi, because they don’t have any.”

“And what the hell are we going to do with the fish when I’ve caught it? We’re driving back to Vancouver this afternoon. Where are we going to store it? In the glove box?”

“We could buy a cooler bag. Or a small cooler.”

“Not really the souvenirs I was looking to bring back.”

“You wouldn’t have to buy it, Justine. I could buy it.”

I jerk my head again. This is unexpected. Coolers, glove boxes, Jus’s poor catching skills—I hadn’t thought about any of these things. And now they’re threatening to upset my plan.

I want to sink down, lie on the ground. I can’t do it. This is the future, the moment when Perry Richter saves the day. I wriggle out of Justine’s grasp, move in front of her and put my hands on her shoulders. She lifts her sunglasses, and I stare directly into her surprised face. The heat is building in my sockets and my sinuses. I say the words
brave
and
strong
in my mind and imagine a fire extinguisher filling my skull with white foam.

“Are you…s-seeing me?” I ask, pushing through a stammer. “I don’t want you to think about the problems. I want you to leave them alone so you can take part in this. It’s important.”

“Why? Why is this so important?”

“Because…because I am not seeing you. I want you to smile and be yourself, Just Jeans.”

A small breath catches in Justine’s throat. Her mouth tightens, her chin wobbles slightly, then stops. She crosses her arm over her chest, lifts her hand to her shoulder and lays it on mine.

“You’re right,” she says, her voice low. “You’re dead right. I need to get back on track. The Marc Debacle has caused enough grief already.”