Sayonara Slam

by Naomi Hirahara

  “I played shortstop. Made a double play. Won the game. Whee!”

  “Stinky, hey, you remember a guy named Sunny Hirose?” Wishbone tried to help, but it was fruitless.

  “We beat those yes, yes. Beat those Zenimuras,” Stinky said.

  “Yah, yah,” Mas repeated. Stinky wasn’t making any sense at all.

  “I thought you were going to ask him about the Gripsholm,” Wishbone hissed in Mas’s ear.

  Mas nodded. “You knowsu about Gripsholm? I hear youzu talk about it at lawnmower shop.”

  “Gurippusuhomu,” Stinky repeated. “Gripsholm.”

  “It’s a ship, remember, Stinky? Took Nihonjin, including Nisei, to Japan during the war. Didn’t you have some girlfriend on that ship?”

  “Kawaisoo.” Stinky’s face got drawn out like a clown’s. “She died in the Philippines. So sad.”

  “They made a stop in the Philippines, I think,” Wishbone explained. “Didn’t they get transferred onto a second ship?”

  Stinky didn’t respond. He readjusted his attention back to the television program, a cooking show that was discussing the merits of natto, fermented soy beans.

  Something vibrated in Wishbone’s pocket, and he pulled out his cell phone. It wasn’t a clamshell like Mas’s, but a top-of-the-line smartphone.

  He glanced at the screen. “I gotta get going. My son’s here.”

  “Well, thanks so much, ne.”

  “I didn’t do nothing. If only this guy’s head was on straight.” Wishbone let out a sigh and tottered away in his walker.

  “Kiyotsuke.” Mas’s last words to Wishbone were to take care. No matter their rocky relationship in the past, they were now bound together with a common destination, with Wishbone likely to be the first one there.

  “Yeah, what more can we do, huh?” Wishbone then grinned, his face dissolving into a fan of wrinkles.

  Mas decided to stay a little while longer in the Alzheimer’s ward. It began to smell a little like shikko in the room, and Mas wondered if someone might have peed in their pants.

  He silently watched the end of the cooking show with Stinky. It was a repeat, with the hostess cooing and crowing about the merits of natto—helps your eyesight, your digestive system. She was utterly too peppy and kawaii relative to the subject matter. Mas was getting ready to leave, but the program abruptly cut to a familiar face: Amika in some earlier coverage of the World Baseball Classic.

  Settling back in the couch, Mas wondered why he’d never really noticed Amika before. As a regular watcher of this news program, he must have seen her. It wasn’t that she was forgettable. She had a long face with smooth, pale skin and hair past her shoulders. She was definitely attractive in a certain way, but then all these newscasters, especially the female ones, had to be. Perhaps it was her reading of the script. It was refined and warm, nothing like Amika was in person. On the program she was a congenial robot, while her real persona was much more unpredictable.

  Mas watched a montage of images, including Amika eating a Dodger dog with Tommy Lasorda and Vin Scully, and Amika showing off a poster signed by pitcher Hideo Nomo. And then there she was, wearing the smeared blue polka-dotted blouse and interviewing Jin-Won Kim after the first game on Tuesday. It wasn’t her words that transfixed Mas, but what she was holding to her chest with her left hand. A notebook. It could have been any notebook, a generic notebook, except for the writing on its cover: Emperor of Asia.

  Mas abruptly rose, almost toppling some puzzle pieces on a folding table. “I needsu to go,” he announced to no one in particular.

  He was by the locked door, pressing a button for the nurse to let him out, when Stinky called out, “Hey, Mas.” His voice was not as high-pitched as before. It was low and grating like a broken tail pipe scraping the ground. It sounded like the old Stinky.

  Mas turned, and Stinky lobbed the baseball right at his head. He didn’t have time to catch it, and it landed squarely on his forehead.

  Stinky cackled and said, “Good catch.”

  Mas now had a swollen red bump on his head, thanks to Stinky. The nursing-home worker gave him the baseball, castigating him for bringing such a potentially dangerous object into the facility. Nobody got hurt, Mas wanted to say. Nobody except me. Mas began to wonder if Stinky really had Alzheimer’s, or maybe he was thumbing his nose at all of them. A grand final gesture.

  One thing was for sure. He needed to talk to Amika. Luckily, Little Tokyo was only a fifteen-minute drive away. Mas passed aging city buildings with low-slung roofs and stunted palm trees that hadn’t decided whether to die or try to press on toward the sky.

  He first parked at the Miyako Hotel and went in to see if Amika was there. She still had a room but didn’t answer the phone when the front desk called for him. He knew of one other place to check.

  The Far East Café, or Entoro, still had its neon sign and old façade, but they were the only things that had stayed the same. A narrow alley in between seismically retrofitted buildings revealed an outdoor bar filled with probably the same youngsters who frequented Suehiro’s after midnight.

  Sitting at one of the iron-rod tables was a slim figure in a gauzy dress and sneakers. Two empty shot glasses sat in front of her.

  “So are you here to interrogate me, too? Have a seat. Have at it.” Amika gestured to the seat across from her.

  Mas accepted her offer, and when she got a good look at his face, she asked, “What happened to your forehead?”

  “Nuttin’. Just bumped in car.”

  A young waitress with cat-eye makeup and her hair in a bandana came to take his order, but he waved her off. He wasn’t planning to stay long.

  “I seezu your report today,” he said.

  “Oh, the wonderful World Baseball Classic.”

  “Itai, the day he died, holdin’ a notebook.”

  “Really? What a shock.” Amika’s hand began to tremble a bit.

  “And then I seezu you on the terebi, holdin’ the same notebook.”

  “A notebook is a notebook is a notebook.”

  “Not dis one.” Mas took the pencil on the table that was supposed to be for sushi orders. On the margins he wrote the character for teia, . “Dat notebook had dis.”

  Amika got up to leave the table.

  “Zainichi,” he said, causing her to stop in her sneakers.

  She turned slowly. “What the hell did you say?”

  “You’zu Zainichi.”

  Amika returned to the table and lowered herself into her chair.

  Mas wasn’t sure, but he had a hunch. He remembered her linguistic skills at the press conference. Anyone could know a bunch of languages, but Amika seemed especially interested in things Korean.

  “You knowsu Korean.”

  “A lot of Japanese can speak Korean.” Amika went into her purse and pulled out some cigarettes. The same young waitress immediately appeared, scolding, “No smoking, ma’am.”

  Amika zipped up her purse, got up, and stalked out of the bar and down the alley to the street. Mas, leaving a twenty-dollar bill by the empty shot glasses, quickly followed.

  “Ma’am? Shit, how old do I look?” she said, lighting up her cigarette.

  Now that Mas was so close to Amika’s face, he could see the fine lines around her mouth and eyes. Before, he thought she was in her thirties, but he now realized that she was at least forty.

  “Don’t answer that, by the way.” She blew cigarette smoke toward the sidewalk along First Street, and a few young women glared at her and waved away the smoke as they passed. “What the hell is wrong with L.A.?” she murmured to herself.

  The cigarette seemed to settle her. “So you think I’m a Zainichi, huh? What tipped you off? Do I smell like garlic, like those racists say on the internet? I hate kimchi, by the way.”

  Mas had never met a woman quite like Amika. Mari was strong, but not always so self-directed. Amika, on the other hand, seemed to know exactly what she wanted all the time. As a result, she left a clear trail of who she was.<
br />
  “Youzu figure out about Neko and her grandma.”

  “I’m a journalist. That’s what I do for a living. And that’s what I have done for almost twenty years.”

  “But youzu wanted to find out. Your mokuteki. I seezu your mokuteki.”

  “My motivation? How about yours, old man? Why are you hanging out with this disaster of a reporter, Kimura? Because even you know that he’s terrible, right?”

  “I’zu know his grandma.”

  That piece of information seemed to quiet Amika. She dropped her dead stub of a cigarette on the sidewalk, which was marked with an artist’s timeline of the history of Little Tokyo. She crossed her arms, ready to listen.

  “Her name izu Akemi Kimura. Weezu in Hiroshima together. During the pikadon.”

  “Shit,” Amika muttered and her eyes became shiny. For all the prickly thorns on her outside, she was soft inside.

  “We gotsu history together.”

  “I bet you do.” Amika gazed out at First Street, the blur of cars, the lights in restaurants, the pedestrians in motion. “So yes, I’m a Zainichi Korean. It’s not a big secret or anything. I just don’t advertise it.” She leaned against the brick wall and lit another cigarette. “We were forced to get Japanese names. I’m still of that era. So Hadashi. Barefoot. That was my father’s joke, I guess. To pick the weirdest Japanese name that he could think of. Because that’s how he came to Japan. Without even a good pair of shoes to his name.”

  “Youzu papa and mama all in Japan?”

  Amika nodded. “We’re in Nagasaki. So we know something about the pikadon, too.”

  Mas’s eyes widened. So was Amika a legacy of the atomic blast, too?

  “I know my career is coming to an end. Hell, I’m surprised I’ve even lasted this long. Because it’s all about looking kawaii in Japan, right? Like a forever-youthful anime character. Believe it or not, Itai inspired me, at least professionally. He took risks. He challenged me. Of course, he could investigate the thing he did because he was working for Nippon Series and not for a mainstream outlet. Television journalism is more superficial, based more on my hair and makeup than what might come out of my mouth.”

  Amika took a final drag of her cigarette, savoring the nicotine moving through her system before she dropped it on the ground and stepped on it. “I know my days at the news desk are numbered. I figured, what the hell, I’ll go after the stories that I’ve always wanted to cover. A female knuckleball pitcher in Hawaii. And then when I’m doing some research, I find out that her father was born in Manchuria. And not only that, but in an orphanage. My mind begins to whirl. It can’t be, right? Could it be? Then I come to find out that Jin-Won Kim’s assistant had done research at that very same orphanage. We have two talented knuckleball pitchers, and that’s not an easy thing to pull off in the pros. It’s not only about physical skill, but the mind. Both Jin-Won and Neko can deal with uncertainty, risk. Is it really a surprise that they share the same DNA?”

  “Neko’s family not happy wiz you.”

  “No, that’s an understatement.” Her hands dipped in her bag for another cigarette. “They’re furious. Neko’s father still denies it. The adoptive grandparents are threatening to sue the station if we air anything about it. Quite a disaster, I would say.”

  “Sorry,” Mas said.

  “No reason to be sorry. I’m doing my job if the people I interview are mad at me. I’m supposed to be uncovering the truth, and more times than not, it’s a truth that no one really wants to hear.”

  If the reporter was talking about truth, then Mas would hold her to it. “Howsu about the notebook?” he said, bringing up the reason he was on the lookout for her in the first place.

  Amika looked at Mas as if she was seeing him for the first time. “I’ve underestimated you,” she said. She unzipped her bag again, only this time, instead of a pack of cigarettes, she brought out a notebook. The notebook with written on the cover. Itai’s notebook. “I took it because I was curious about what he was working on. Take it.” She held it out to Mas. “It’s not worth anything. It looks like he was just doodling during practice. Probably wasting time before press conferences.”

  Mas tapped the kanji on the cover. “Teia, you knowsu about this?”

  “Sounds like something those nationalists would come up with. Maybe Itai had some kind of lead? Maybe it was something he couldn’t forget.” Amika was distracted by a young couple walking arm and arm across the street by a restaurant called Mr. Pizza. “I broke it off with Sawada today, by the way. I figure you knew about that, too. Mas Arai, the invisible man who knows everything. You do make a good detective.”

  He had been called a detective once before, and he deeply resented it. He hated the thought of sticking his nose into someone else’s business. But he also realized that he’d been doing just that ever since that first baseball game between Japan and Korea.

  “And for the record, I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill Itai. And I certainly wouldn’t have done anything to harm Mrs. Kim.”

  Mas believed Amika about the last thing, but frankly, he wasn’t sure of the first. Either way, tonight the girl needed someone to believe in her. Mas could at least fake that much.

  Chapter Thirteen

  When he got home, Mas studied the letters and numbers in Itai’s notebook at the kitchen table. The first line was “T HR HR HR.” Second line: “S 340 HR 320.” And so on.

  The back door opened. Lloyd stepped in and took off his work shoes, leaving them by the door.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Hallo.”

  Mas noticed that Lloyd didn’t have the weariness of the past couple of days. He seemed tired, but a good tired. “It was a good day,” he said, explaining that they’d finished fertilizing the entire field.

  Mas grunted. In that way, he and Lloyd were the same. The completion of a hard day’s work, especially if it involved readying the soil, was energizing rather than taxing.

  “What’s that?” Lloyd looked over Mas’s shoulder.

  “Sumptin.”

  “I can see that. Related to baseball? If so, a lot of home runs.”

  Mari, who so far had been quiet in their room, appeared in the kitchen, pulling a suitcase with rolling wheels. “I’m just about packed,” she announced.

  “Where’su you going?”

  “Jill’s wedding. This weekend. Didn’t I tell you? I guess everything has been so hectic lately. Jill and Iris—remember her?—are getting married. In Canada. Where it’s legal.”

  Mas had forgotten about the wedding and wondered if Tug and Lil had decided to go.

  “I figure Tug would have told you,” Mari said, not giving Mas a chance to respond. “Jill is convinced that her parents won’t show up. I mean, she puts up this tough-girl front, but you know that she’s dying inside. She was always their shining star. Remember how Mom used to compare me to her? ‘Look at Jill Yamada. Why don’t you be like her? Nice girl. Straight As. Going to be a doctor someday.’ Only now she’s a struggling mixed-media artist who is also a lesbian. Funny how these things work out.”

  “Mari, don’t be like that,” Lloyd said.

  “No, my mom was always on my case, Lloyd. At least with Dad, there were no expectations. Sometimes it was easier that way.”

  Mas frowned. He hated when Mari got into these moods. She wanted to punish Mas and Chizuko for all they did wrong. She was often correct in her assessment, but Mas felt that she should at least keep Chizuko out of it; she had no way of fighting back.

  “Ease up, okay?” Lloyd continued to try to calm her down.

  “I just feel bad for Jill. She needs her parents to back her up. This is going to be one of the most important days of her life, and her parents aren’t going to be there.”

  Mas felt the full burn of irony. He hadn’t been there for Mari and Lloyd’s wedding, either. But he wasn’t given a choice. He hadn’t been invited.

  “Tug and Lil gotsu their reasons. They don’t need to prove nuttin’ to Jill. They beh
ind her every step of the way. Sheezu gotsu know dat.”

  Mari rolled her eyes.

  Mas rose with his notebook. “I mighta wanted to go to my daughter’s wedding, too, youzu know. People make own decisions. There’s nuttin’ to do about it.”

  The next morning, Mas forced himself to sleep in. He’d turned off the ringer on his cell phone, but not the vibrator, so now it was practically dancing on his dresser like a hyperactive giant bug. It was probably Yuki; Genessee usually had a seminar with graduate students at UCLA that day. But just in case it was Genessee, Mas, his bones cracking, lifted himself out of bed. Barefoot, he padded over on the carpet to see who wanted his attention. It was no number that he recognized. Without thinking clearly, he flipped open the phone.

  “Hallo.” Mas’s voice was more muffled than usual.

  “Masao-san. Is that you?”

  “Whozu dis?”

  “Akemi. Akemi Kimura.”

  “Ah, ah…” Mas said, eloquent as usual.

  “I haven’t been able to get in touch with Yukikazu. He gave me your phone number earlier this week. Sumimasen, calling you like this.”

  “Nah, itsu orai. His phone turned out to be no good.”

  “Did it stop working?”

  The story was too long to delve into.

  “Is he there with you?”

  “Heezu wiz Neko Kawasaki.”

  “Oh, no,” Akemi said. Mas didn’t expect that reaction. Akemi obviously knew who Neko Kawasaki was, so shouldn’t she be more excited? “He’s been so obsessed with her. I thought that by seeing her in person again he’d be more realistic.”

  Mas didn’t know what to say.

  “You know that she’s going to break his heart, Mas. What would a woman like that want with Yukikazu?”

  Akemi had had her moments of being highfalutin’ at times, even when she was young. Chizuko would have quipped, hana ga takai. That her nose was up in the air.

  “Ah, well, heezu nice boy,” Mas said, both shocked and mortified that he was coming to Yuki’s defense. “Don’t hurt nobody’s feelings. Gambatteru.” As soon as Mas finished talking, he knew that he was describing himself.