Gasa-Gasa Girl Read Online Free Page B

moment to get his bearings. The phone by the nowhere stairs was ringing. Mas didn’t know whether to answer or not, but it could be important. News about Mari.
    “Hallo.”
    “Mas—?”
    “Hallo,” Mas repeated. The voice on the other line sounded familiar.
    “Itsu Haruo.”
    Haruo. Mas’s skinny friend with the fake eye. At first Mas was going to ask how he got Mari’s number, but then remembered that he had given Haruo the number in case of emergencies. “Whatsu the time?”
    “Youzu just get up? Itsu four o’clock ova here. Izu at the Flower Market. Itsu a slow day today—just wanna make sure you got to New York
orai
.”
    “Izu here,” Mas said. But nothing was all right. “Mari’s missin’. Son-in-law gone to find her.”
    There was a pause on the other end. Haruo finally murmured, “Missin’. That makes no sense. You say sumptin’ to her,
deshō
?”
    Mas didn’t like what Haruo was trying to say. “Haven’t even seen her. Or the grandson.” Mas didn’t want to get into Takeo’s health problems right now.
    “You call the police?”
    Mas couldn’t imagine getting them involved. “She left a message, Haruo. No funny business, Izu sure. Just a lot of stress right now, money and work.”
    “I see,” said Haruo. Mas could imagine Haruo nodding his head, his shock of black and white overgrown hair barely covering the keloid scar on his face. Since going to a counselor in Little Tokyo for his gambling addiction, Haruo considered himself an expert on anything troubling somebody’s mind.
    “I gotta go, Haruo.”
    “You callsu me when they find her. You promise, Mas? You gotsu both my numbas, here at the Market and home.”
    “Yah, yah. Got work to do, Haruo.”
    Before Haruo could ask what kind of work, Mas hung up the phone. There was no sign that the son-in-law had returned to the underground apartment during the night. The heater had been left on, so the front room was now uncomfortably warm. The futon and the two blankets, apparently kicked off by Mas during the middle of the night, were crumpled on the brown rug beside the scratchy wool sweater he had been wearing—a hand-me-down from a customer’s teenage son.
    Mas tore pieces of the French bread and balled up the soft insides for his breakfast meal. He noticed an old jar of Nescafé and warmed water in the teakettle over the stove. After sipping a strong cup of coffee (two heaping teaspoons of Nescafé) sweetened with another two teaspoons of sugar, Mas made a decision. He couldn’t just sit there and do nothing. Pulling on the wool sweater, he stumbled to the desk and waded through the papers. Beside the stack of photographs were some brochures of the Waxley Garden sponsored by the Ouchi Foundation. Taking a brochure and a map of Brooklyn, Mas headed out from the underground apartment in search of Lloyd’s garden.

    T ug had told him that most New Yorkers survived without cars, and Mas believed him. It was barely eight o’clock and the sidewalks were filled with well-wrapped men and women holding briefcases, duffel bags, tabloid newspapers, and disposable cups of steaming coffee. Mas stopped by a sycamore tree growing in a dirt square and studied the map. There was a diamond of green labeled Prospect Park, where Takeo Shiota’s Japanese garden lived. A few blocks north was the Waxley House.
    Before Mas could tackle any real work, he needed reinforcements. He walked across Flatbush Avenue toward a grocery store, its facade covered in thick plastic strips like those of a car wash. Bright orange and red gerber daisies were bunched up, their stems soaking in water next to a large open refrigerator holding plastic containers of cut-up cantaloupe and honeydew melon. Inside, the small market reminded him of his neighborhood liquor store back in Altadena. Boxes of cereal and cans of soup were stacked high up to the ceiling—no space was wasted. Behind the front counter were a young Asian girl and a man about Mas’s age, perhaps her