Blood Hina (4 page)

Mas didn’t waste much more time in Montebello. There was obviously some kind of strain in the household. He wasn’t sure if it was from the washed-up freckled-face beauty or maybe the stress of the wedding. But something wasn’t quite right with Spoon, who had returned to the living room without whatever she was supposedly looking for.

She didn’t seem too happy to hear her husband-to-be knocking on the door. “Haruo, you have your own keys, just let yourself in. This is going to be your house from now on. No
enryo.”
What happened to all that kissing mess in the restaurant? It seemed that all that affection had evaporated once Spoon returned home. If this was a sign of things to come, Mas wouldn’t be seeing Haruo much anymore.

Mas said his goodbyes to the couple, eager to be released from so-called domestic felicity.

The rest of the evening was the usual.
Terebi
, television, a Budweiser, and a swig of generic Pepto-Bismol to help his stomach recover from the chop suey. Just like with any other good thing, there was always a price to be paid.

Sleep came fast—first in his easy chair and then at two o’clock in the morning on his sheetless mattress. He rolled himself in a blanket made by Chizuko; sometimes he could imagine the touch of her callused fingers moving the crochet needle back and forth.

The ringing of the phone awakened him. “Hallo,” he spoke into the handset. His mouth felt pasty, and he moistened his cracked lips with as much spit as he could muster.

“Mas.” It was Haruo.

Sonafagun. Mas blinked hard, his hand reaching for the
alarm clock. “Izu late?”

“Itsu not that,” Haruo said. The reception was bad and Mas could barely hear his friend’s voice above the static. Where the hell was he calling from?

Haruo continued. “Wedding’s cancel.”

“Gonna rain?”

“No, Mas, itsu ova. No wedding no more.”

CHAPTER TWO

M
as had seen Haruo in bad shape before. The worst was when he helped him move into his one-bedroom apartment in the Crenshaw District after the divorce had taken away his house and his children. Haruo had let his hair grow even longer than usual, and it practically circled his neck like a scarf. He’d stopped shaving, so even the scarred side of his face, the left, started sprouting long, sparse, wiry whiskers that resembled those on a catfish. Mas, who usually didn’t take much stock in appearances, had to admit even he was a bit revolted. If he’d run into Haruo on a street corner, he would have immediately crossed to the other side.

When Haruo fell into depression, he didn’t hole himself up in his apartment. No, he’d wander out to card clubs in Gardena, casinos in Hawaiian Gardens, underground poker games in San Gabriel—anything that would divert his attention from his insides. He’d place bet after bet on green felt tables until his pockets were empty, and then he’d make deals with
Mama-san
loan sharks out in the parking lot, mortgaging any last thing he owned at the risk of his life. Haruo often even forget to eat. Actually, the gambling started to feed off of his body, taking anything good and productive and fueling it into chances, odds, and promises
that never seemed to materialize.

It pained Mas to witness his friend transform into this frenzied and emaciated state, especially since Haruo’s usual sunny optimism was the only thing able to pull Mas out of his own dark slumps. So Mas wasn’t that happy to be driving out to Crenshaw this morning, fearful of what he might find when he arrived at the chain-link fence around Haruo’s rent-controlled duplex. He had disconnected his telephone a couple of days ago in preparation for his new marital status and move, so he’d been making his calls on a sticky pay phone outside a neighborhood liquor store. Trouble was, he kept running out of change to feed the phone. The only way Mas could continue their conversation without being cut off was in person.

Mas spotted two bony ankles in
zori
slippers underneath the Honda Civic in the driveway. His heart leaped—surely Haruo hadn’t done anything drastic—and he pulled desperately at one of the feet. Haruo was actually heavier than he looked, and Mas didn’t get very far. “Ah—” and then a hollow sound of something banging against the bottom of the car. A few moments later the legs squirmed out from below the car and Haruo, his clothing smeared in black oil, emerged.

“Mas, itsu you. Thought maybe youzu the neighbor kid.” He rubbed his oily hands on the front of the torn jumpsuit he was wearing over his jeans and T-shirt. He was having car problems, he explained, and was hoping an oil change would be the magic solution. He told Mas to go into the duplex while he washed himself off with the garden hose.

The apartment was as bare as Mas had ever seen it, making
it look much larger than it really was. Only boxes, like giant building blocks, sat atop each other on the threadbare rug. A plain black suit, a clearance item from the now-shuttered Joseph’s Mens Wear in Little Tokyo, hung from a wire hanger from one of the grooves of the heater against the wall. The suit had been for funerals but was going to be baptized for a happier occasion today. In fact, the ceremony would be happening four hours from now, Mas noted, as he glanced at the Casio watch wrapped around his wrist with twine.

Haruo, who’d shed his messy jumpsuit outside on the stairs, must have noticed Mas’s sad examination of the empty apartment. “Yah, gotta find me new place now.”

Mas frowned.

“Already tole landlord I’m gonna move out. If I wanna move back in, have to pay double.”

Mas felt a streak of pain surge down into his toes. Sonafagun. Haruo’s Social Security barely covered the cut-rate rent he’d been paying for the last fifteen years.

Haruo shrugged his shoulders.
“Shikataganai
, huh?” Mas used to be a big proponent of
shikataganai
, it can’t be helped. Wasn’t that the official slogan of most Japanese out there, at least of Mas’s generation? Got thrown in camp.
Shikataganai
. Someone break into my house in broad daylight and take all our jewelry.
Shikataganai
. Insurance not going to pay for wife’s experimental cancer treatment.
Shikataganai
.

Lately, though,
shikataganai was
starting to lose its charm.
Shikataganai
made you swallow your anger when you should be beating your chest and yelling.
Shikataganai
made you sit still when you needed to move forward.
Shikataganai
made you think that you deserved bad things. And Haruo, of all
people, deserved a lucky break. No amount of
shikataganai
would convince Mas otherwise.

They sat in the kitchen on top of boxes, sipping from room-temperature cans of Budweiser like morning orange juice. There was nothing else to drink, and Haruo, anyway, seemed eager to embrace the temporary buzz of beer. Mas waited to hear exactly why Spoon had canceled the wedding. By beer number three, Haruo’s lips really loosened.

“You saw those
ningyo
, you knowsu, the two ole dolls, in Spoon’s house.”

“Yah, for Hina Matsuri.”

Haruo nodded. “They just gotsu those dolls and now they’re gone. Pah—gone.”

“Whaddamean, gone? Just see them last night.”

“Somebody take them. Right there in the house. No one break in.”

“Gotta be dat girl,” Mas tried to remember the daughter’s name. “Ya know, the
sobakasu bijin.”
“Who?” Then Haruo laughed. “Yah, she gotsu freckles, but I don’t know if she a beauty. Datsu Spoon’s youngest, Dee.”

Mas wasn’t going to be a
sukebe
—nasty old man—and argue the pluses and minuses of the physical attributes of a girl young enough to be their daughter.

“Dee the one who saysu I stole the dolls. Spoon saysu dat I need to lay low.”

“Do shite?”
Why in the hell should he? “Itsu not like they gonna report to police.”

The pupil in Haruo’s fake eye began to float out of position.

“You meansu they goin’ to?”

“Not Spoon’s idea. Itsu dat girlu, Dee. They already called the police, but takes them awhile to get there.”

Mas cursed silently. “Anyway, what would you want wiz those dolls?” Kid’s stuff, weren’t they?

Haruo’s right eye blinked hard, while his fake one stayed eerily open. “Saysu I sell them. To gamble.”

Mas took another swig of his beer, his tongue feeling the sharpness of the open aluminum tab.

“I quit. You knowsu. After I meet Spoon, I don’t even have the feeling anymore.”

Mas placed the half-empty can on the linoleum floor.

“Dis Dee no fan of yours, Haruo.”

“Tell me sumptin I don’t know, Mas. None of those girls like me too much. Can’t blame them—their papa was a big hero.”

Again, platitudes about the dead husband. “How did dat guy die, anyhowsu?” Mas expected to hear the usual—cancer, heart attack, complications from diabetes. But Haruo surprised him.

“Jiko.”

“Accident? What kind?”

“Truck went off the road. Down there in Imperial Valley. In a small town called Hanley, 1980s sometime.”

“Whatsu he doin’ ova in Imperial Valley?” Imperial Valley was a former dust bowl next to the Salton Sea, a pitiful pool of salt water trapped inland near the Mexican border. Mas had worked there in the tomato fields for a truck farmer, just one stop of many throughout the Southwest before he got into gardening.

“Some kind of flower deal. Heezu with his flower market
buddy, Jorg de Groot.”

“Neva heard of no Jorg de Groot. What kind of name izu dat?”

“Orandajin
. Papa was a Dutchman.” Both Mas and Haruo were well aware of the Dutch contributions to horticulture in California. “You seen their old farm, I bet. Right there on a hill in Montebello. Birds-of-paradise.”

Mas thought back and nodded his head. Sure, he remembered, he told Haruo. He had a gardening customer in Montebello at one time, in fact. A wooden ranch-style house like Spoon’s, only larger on a sloping hill. One day, a dog took off with Mas’s lunch and he chased him into a field of birds-of-paradise. These plants were young yet. The long blade-like leaves hit just below his knees. The flowers did indeed resemble birds, cranes with crowns of bright orange and beaks of dirty purple. From their clumped nests of leaves, the birds-of-paradise seemed ready to chirp and cry for food.

“Well, dat used to be Jorg de Groot’s place,” Haruo said after Mas attempted to describe what he saw. “Son moved the whole operation down to Oceanside. Widow lives right across the street from Spoon now. Dat Jorg and Ike longtime friends, even before the war. When Ike was sent ova to camp in Manzanar, it was the de Groots who watch ova his family’s place. They took good, good care.”

Mas had heard stories of such
hakujin
, black, and Mexican do-gooders. Ones who didn’t seek to gain from the Japanese being kicked out of California during World War Two. Ones who paid property taxes for the Japanese while they were locked up. Some even went all the way out to the
makeshift prisons at racetracks, deserts, and swamplands to make sure their former neighbors were okay. Those weren’t the run-of-the-mill type people, however. Mas didn’t know if the shoe had been on the other foot, he would have done the same.

“Anyway, both of them die, right on the spot in dat accident ova in Imperial Valley.”

Mas bit down on his dentures.

“Spoon’s daughters still pretty young, in their twenties. Dee being the youngest was Daddy’s little girl, you know? Took it hard.” Mas nodded.

“So I guess that’s why those Hina Matsuri dolls were a big deal for her. They were missin’, but just found. For a long time, in an ole safe-deposit box under Jorg’s name.”

Why would the Hayakawa dolls be in this other’s man’s safe-deposit box? Didn’t make any sense.

Apparently the Hayakawas were surprised as well. Turned out that no one alive in Jorg’s family knew about the safe-deposit box, which had been opened in a bank in San Diego. The box had been free of charge at first, but the bank had instituted an annual fee a few years ago. Jorg, being dead, wasn’t able to make the payments, which meant the contents went up for auction.

“Sum doll people ova in San Diego buy the whole thing. But then Sonya find out and tellsu Spoon whatsu goin’ on. Spoon go on the computa and buy the dolls back, but they cost her and cost her good.”

“How much?”

“She don’t tell me but I knowsu itsu a lot. Don’t know where she got the money. Sheezu flat broke—tole me dat she
don’t even wanna a weddin’ ceremony. But I insist. She got married in camp, you knowsu. Second time around, I figure she deserve a white dress.”

Mas’s mouth was full with beer, and he took his time swallowing. So that’s why Haruo had gone to all this trouble with the ceremony. He wanted to give Spoon something she wasn’t able to have behind barbed wire. The thing was, Haruo also didn’t have an extra dime to his name, but he claimed that his boss, Taxie, had given him an advance against his wages.

“How long youzu stay ova there last night, anyhows?” Mas asked.

“Ten. Spoon so tired, she fell asleep on the couch.”

Mas then remembered what Dee had told him to remind Haruo. “You lock the door?”

Haruo pulled and twisted a long strand of grey hair, and his fake eye meandered. “I dunno if I did. I plenty tired, too, Mas. I came back here, went straight to bed, and then my landlord bangs on my door in the middle of the night. Emergency, he say. Gotta call Spoon.”