Gasa-Gasa Girl Read Online Free Page A

Tug—just like he had thought.
    “
So
—
ka,
” Mas finally said.
    “It’s not that we wouldn’t pay you eventually,” Lloyd added. “I know that you’re neglecting your own customers to come here.”
    Mas grunted. He had asked his best friend, Haruo Mukai, to look after his nine customers back in L.A. But since Haruo had gotten a part-time job selling chrysanthemums at the Southern California Flower Market, Mas had to also depend on a no-good gardener, Stinky Yoshimoto, who cut down bushes and trees so severely that their forms looked like the bodies of amputees.
    “We’d just pay you later, when Kazzy sees that all is going well. And quite frankly, the fact that you’re Japanese may calm his nerves.”
    “Nerves?” This Kazzy-
san
was sounding more and more like a man gone
kuru-kuru-pa
.
    “He’s just a little on edge. The opening is supposed to be in May, but the vandalism really set us back. Now Mari wants us to walk away from the project.”
    Not a bad idea, thought Mas.
    “But she seems to forget that my work at the garden paid for her insurance when she was pregnant, the rent, and other bills. We’ve used up our savings. She thinks that we can live on nothing, on air. Maybe we once could, but not now, with Takeo.”
    Mas hadn’t known Mari was hanging by a financial thread, in spite of the fact that she had some kind of fancy degree from Columbia University. To live from paycheck to paycheck—like father, like daughter.
    Lloyd pulled back his hair behind his ears and cradled his head, as if he had been physically battered. He finally looked up, and Mas noticed that his son-in-law had black flecks, like splintered glass, in his muddy-colored eyes. “Here you are, on your first night in New York, and I should be taking you out to dinner. But I have to go look for Mari and Takeo.”
    Mas wanted to join Lloyd in his search, but he knew that he would only slow down his long-legged son-in-law. And besides, Mari had probably disappeared because of him. Mas figured he would be the last person she would want to see.
    “There’s salami in the fridge and a baguette by the toaster oven. And there’s plenty of restaurants in the neighborhood within walking distance.”
    “No worry about me,” said Mas. “Youzu just find wife and kid.”

    A fter the son-in-law left, Mas opened the refrigerator for the salami, but opted for a six-pack of strange beer instead. Made somewhere in Europe, the beer was as thick as syrup and dark as Coca-Cola, but it still did what it was supposed to do: help ease Mas’s troubles. Lloyd had placed a couple of blankets and a futon covering on the couch, as well as two limp pillows. Mas turned on their rickety television and watched the news. The anchors and reporters looked more subdued than the ones in Los Angeles. They didn’t seem to force fake smiles and banter, and instead of bright-blue skies and palm tree backgrounds, the sets were simple, painted in basic blue, red, and black. The stories, however, told of the same kinds of shootings and gang violence, only in neighborhoods he had never heard of. Mas switched from one channel to the next. Unlike L.A., there were no Japanese American reporters, reminding Mas that he was in territory where he didn’t belong. He drank another beer and then a third, feeling the alcohol loosen the tightness in his neck and shoulders. Soon the couch in the Park Slope apartment became his friend, cradling him to sleep amid the muffled noise from outside, where his daughter, grandchild, and son-in-law were wandering somewhere, loose and separate.

    A crab was pinching Mas’s big toe. It appeared out of nowhere, and then dozens of minicrabs descended on Mas’s body from cracks in the floor, the walls, the ceilings. As they traveled, their spindly legs made clicking sounds. Soon the sounds became louder and louder, merging together into a shrill pitch.
    Mas woke up and shook his head to clear his mind from the dream of crabs. He paused a