Tropic of Orange

by Karen Tei Yamashita

  He thought about his palm trees like jeweled fingers. They towered in the sky. Formed the true diamond lanes of the city. Somebody wrote something about his palm trees. He read it somewhere. About them being “long rows of phallic palm trees with sun-bleached pubic hair.” He was appreciative of the image. Sexy and tropical. A naked beach-like representation. Still, if he saw the beach once a year, it was an excessive count. Beach was an imagined thing skirtin’ the far Westside. He had heard the downtown high-rises referred to as phallic, too. Maybe his palm trees were standing up giving everybody the finger.

  Today, he was doing the rounds with the street peddlers. They had their unspoken territories, too. He never saw them get in fights about it. They were very civilized about territory. Plenty of corners to go around. Plenty of freeway ramps. El Norte was big. L.A. was big. Grande. Sí. He had these conversations all the time. Get your business license, see. Fill this out. Put it in the paper. La Opinión will do. A few were old-timers, but most moved on. It was too risky if you didn’t have documents.

  “Margarita, what’s on sale today?”

  “Everything on sale. Otherwise gonna rot. Business’s not so good today.” Margarita smiled. She always smiled, even when business was not so good. Even though she got her boys out of El Salvador to escape the mano blanca death squad and now they were gangbanging in L.A. with the Mara Salvatrucha.

  “I’ll take a bag of peanuts.”

  “Señor Buzzworm, you always take peanuts.”

  “I’m an elephant for peanuts.”

  “Take bananas. They gonna rot.” She forced him a bunch. “What’s the music today?” She pointed at the Walkman in his ears.

  “For you, Margarita, oldies.”

  “Aretha Franklin.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “I know. I know you listen to mariachi también.”

  “Los Camperos. The very best.”

  “Sorry,” she shook her head. “Is not my culture. I, Salvador.”

  “You,” he pointed at her. “Aretha Franklin. Don’t be such a purist.”

  She laughed. “Look. I got nice oranges. This not the season see. So is imported from Florida.”

  “Naranjas,” he nodded, but he thought he’d better set Margarita straight. “If it’s Florida, it’s not imported. Same country, see. If it’s México, it’s imported.”

  “Por qué? Florida’s more far away than México.”

  “You got a point, Margarita.”

  “You bet. You buy bananas? I throw in one naranja free.”

  “I’m a sucker, Margarita.”

  “No, Señor Buzzworm. You’re a good customer.”

  Buzzworm walked away with his bag of peanuts and bananas. Orange in his pocket. Crossing the street, he heard shots and the screech of tires hauling off. He ran around the corner, found a kid glued to a chain-link fence turning several shades of green. Kid recognized Buzzworm and blubbered something about curving bullets.

  Buzzworm looked the kid over—not dead, a survivor—remembered he was the same kid mouthing off yesterday. Same little homey looking foolish, looking the other way, pawing the concrete with his Air Jordans sticking out his baggy pants. “Sounds like you had yourself a religious experience.” Buzzworm was almost sympathetic. “Course, you could be dead and having yourself a religious experience in a few days, depending on when they scheduled the funeral.”

  “I ain’t lyin’.”

  “Why should you lie? Few days ago, getting shot at was just things as usual. Surviving was no big deal.”

  “So it ain’t. I just saw the bullets is all.”

  “Like Superman, you saw the bullets.”

  “Like slow motion.”

  “Bullets coming at you at twelve hundred feet per second.”

  “Movin’ from the barrel stickin’ outta the car.”

  Buzzworm pulled the orange from his pocket. “Better eat something. Take the edge off the experience. Food is best.” Handed little homey the orange like it was a hamburger. “So you dodged the bullets.”

  “No. They curved by me sudden-like.”

  “Some say when your time comes, you see everything timelessly. I suppose you oughta see the bullets coming your way.”

  “Weren’t my time. Wasn’t like that. Was more like space curved. Shit. Ain’t nobody gonna believe me.”

  “I believe you.” Buzzworm nodded. “You got some vision.” He took off one of his watches. It was a waterproof one with a calculator. “Individual who owned this watch did calculations in the shower. Went on to teach math and invest in the stock market. Say he was wearing this very watch when he shook hands with the great Muhammad Ali. Now it’s yours.”

  “Ah man.” The kid could probably find himself a better one, but something about Buzzworm. Something about something so simple. Just believing. Made this watch priceless.

  Like Buzzworm said, every watch has got a story. Everybody’s got a timepiece and a piece of time. Watch was an outward reflection of your personal time. Had nothing to do with being on time. Had to do with a sense of time. Sense of urgency. Sense of rhythm. Cadence. Sense of history. Like listening to oldies with Margarita. Time could heal, but it wouldn’t make wrongs go away. Time came back like a reminder. Time folded with memory. In a moment, everything could fold itself up, and time stand still.

  CHAPTER 14:

  BudgetsSkirting Downtown

  I checked the giant arrival/departure board over the international gangway at Bradley International. KAL from Seoul ARRIVED. VARIG from Rio ARRIVED. QANTAS from Sidney DELAYED. JAL from Tokyo LANDING. MEXICANA from Mexico City LANDED. I could see the wave of Koreans pushing their carts with luggage up the ramp. Then there were scattered American tourists with the peeled look of happy lobsters baked to near melanoma on the beaches at Ipanema. The Mexican contingent would be in the third wave. I had made it in time. Buzz’s description had been vague. No luggage. Maybe a simple wide briefcase or carry on. That could be anyone. The name was also vague. C. Juárez. I walked to a courtesy phone and requested the page.

  “C. Juárez on Mexicana flight 900. Please contact your party at the nearest courtesy phone.”

  I watched a man in a suit with a large briefcase wander out past the guard. A woman with a child in her arms struggled with a big baby bag slung over her shoulder. She was searching the large hall for something, probably a familiar face, and trying to adjust the bag. I watched her from my phone as she bumped into the man and apologized. I waited, but the man with the single briefcase disappeared through the glass doors to the street. “Please repeat the page,” I made my request again and searched for another possibility.

  Suddenly, a voice came over the phone. “Hello?” It was the voice of a woman. “Hello?”

  I could see the woman with the baby at the courtesy phone on the other end of the hall.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “I’m waiting for my page. Are you trying to page someone too?”

  “No. I was just paged,” she said.

  “Obviously you’re not Charles Juárez.”

  “No,” she said, and hung up.

  I could see her rush away from the phone with the kid and her baby bag. She had no other luggage. This would be strange for a mother traveling with a child. I ran out the door.

  Emi was circling her Supra like a tigress of some sort. She had the back trunk open with the almost defiant expectation of an imminent passenger. And Piazzolla was still jamming. La Muerte del Angel. “Damn it Gabe. You can only keep these guys at bay so long.”

  I slammed the trunk down. “Come on. See. The woman with the baby and the yellow bag. The taxi’s pulling out right now. Let’s go for it.”

  Emi slammed the Supra through five out of six gears, wandered over four lanes and back three, and planted us neatly behind the taxi. “He’s heading for the Century.” The Century Freeway was empty, and we flew east over Inglewood in a matter of minutes. “Okay, looks like north on the Harbor. It’s probably gonna be the same mess going toward the downtown int
erchange. Semi’s still turned over.”

  “Taxi knows it. He’s taking streets.”

  Emi maneuvered the Supra east following deftly behind the taxi. “Damn light,” she muttered and stepped on the gas. The timing might just let the taxi pull away. I could hear the siren from behind and groaned. “Ambulance.” Emi watched the taxi with one eye and the mirror with the other. “If the taxi pulls over, I pull over. Is this a plan?”

  “That’s the plan,” I agreed. We pulled over behind the taxi, and the ambulance sped around us, lights flashing urgent and hysterical. We pulled out with the taxi and found ourselves following the path of the ambulance to the emergency entrance of a hospital. Emi drove past the entrance and circled round. I watched the woman struggle out with her child and the bag and hurry into the hospital.

  “Gabe. What is this? Why are we following an innocent woman with a kid to a hospital?”

  “You don’t get off an international flight without any bags and rush to a hospital.”

  “Maybe you do. Maybe she’s got a sick relative. Maybe the kid’s sick.”

  “Maybe not.”

  “Well, if she’s hauling drugs, maybe it’s legal shit. Anesthesia. Antibiotics. Colombian aspirin.”

  “Come on.”

  “Right.”

  “I’m sick.”

  “Right. Poison fungi.”

  “Good. Thanks, Angel.”

  I hobbled into the emergency lobby on Emi’s arm, but we didn’t have to keep up this pretense too long. A hospital aide walked from the elevator and greeted the woman. She held the baby while C. Juárez opened her big baby bag and produced a small Igloo cooler. It could have been baby bottles or baby food. The aide tickled the baby’s chin for a moment before handing her back, took the blue cooler, and headed for the elevator. I nodded to Emi and hobbled forward in distress. “Going up!” and the aide was obliged to wait for me. I nodded at her choice for the floor and followed her out far enough to see her disappear behind doors marked, SURGERY—AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. Maybe Emi was right. Anesthesia or Colombian aspirin. I walked to the nurse’s station and feigned stupidity. “I’m sorry. I’m lost. Where am I? I’m supposed to meet Doctor . . . Doctor . . .” I pulled my GP’s name out of the air, “Steven Maier.” I looked at the forbidden doors and lied, “He’s a surgeon.”

  “The name’s not familiar. There are all sorts of surgeons. Does he do transplants?”

  “Transplants?” Maier did obstetrics too. “Do babies count?” I offered.

  “Well, we specialize in infant heart and kidney.”

  When I got back to the lobby, I could see Emi on the other side of the glass doors outside making time with a CHP whose uniform fit him a few donuts too tight. He had his boot in the car door and his flip-tops flipped up. Better to see Emi. She was leaning into his car like it was just any old Crown Victoria painted black and white, like she could hold him up and not the other way around. She flicked her silky hair about—a gesture which could indicate a lot of things including flip you off. “There’s my boyfriend now.” she smiled.

  “Hope you’re feeling better,” he nodded at me with dumb compassion. She must have told him I had my stomach pumped or some damn thing like that.

  “I’ll be all right.” I walked quickly to the car. Like hell I was going to feign limping for anybody’s amusement.

  “See you at traffic school,” Emi waved much too sweetly behind her and caught up with me. “Hey, I told him you had to have an enema. You know, poison mushrooms. Bad scene.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Don’t be mad. It was for a reason. Listen. The ambulance. It was the guy in the Porsche, his passenger and the truck driver. You know the big accident on the Harbor downtown with the semi? The Porsche (by the way, did I tell you it was an ’89 911 Carrera 4?). Anyway, the Porsche was at fault. Guy went off. Traveled across two lanes, careened around and right into the semi. The NewsNow van never got close. In fact, they started evacuating everybody. Are you listening? Because, the semi was hauling propane. Police started yanking open car doors and telling people to get the hell out. But too late. Kaboom!” Emi gestured luridly for effect. “If you were a gawker, you got it in the face. Cop saw it blow in his rearview just as he followed the ambulance up the ramp. The blast took an entire overpass with it. Says the Sig’s currently a firestorm in a crater. Not to mention the concrete and steel rubble, buried cars, and the pile-up for miles. Can you imagine? And get this: Driver in the Porsche Carrera was DOA. Passenger survived miraculously. Just walked away. The truck driver is in critical condition. And, they suspect drugs. An overdose. But the passenger denies it. Says, he was peeling oranges and handing the sections to his driver friend to eat. Says his friend chewed up a piece of orange and passed out. He swears it was the oranges. Can you believe it? Wait ’til I tell the guys in the NewsNow van. They missed everything!”

  It wasn’t my story. I couldn’t care less. I should have been amazed at Emi’s uncanny ability to scrounge information, but I was sore at her for making up stories about me to satisfy her need for the sensational.

  “What about the woman and the baby?” I asked, wounded by her defection from my story line.

  Emi taunted but did not disappoint me. “Woman? Oh yeah. I talked to her. She speaks perfect English. No accent. She said she pumps her breast milk and brings it here every day.”

  “From México City?”

  “Her kid is a little big to be breast feeding, and frankly, she looks a bit flat,” Emi quipped. “My sister didn’t do it past six months, but then they say you can do it for years. La Leche says, just keep pumping.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “Taxi stood by, meter running, and off she went. International breast milk. Who’d a thought!”

  “The benefits of NAFTA. Mexican wet nurses. I wonder if Nestlé knows about this.”

  “Is this serious? I mean, really Gabe. A breast milk conspiracy? Is it spiked?”

  “Spiked oranges. Spiked breast milk. Give me a break, Emi.”

  “I know. I watch too much TV.”

  Emi hit the diamond lane on the on ramp. “Always take advantage of passengers I say. You know, there’s something about being in the diamond lane. Like you’re doing something good for humanity. This is my positive contribution today. I’m the reason there’s hope for the future of L.A.”

  I pointed to southbound traffic, still inching along. “My car’s on the other side. Sorry, Angel, I guess you’ll have to abandon your altruistic duties and get off at the next ramp.”

  “No problem.” The woman instantly slid over three lanes while I strained to see my stalled car through the traffic.

  “Did you see my car?”

  “Nope.”

  “Damn.” It wasn’t there. “Someone stole my car!”

  “Towed. Get real. Who’d want to steal it?” Emi made some calls from her cellular. I’d have to get the car out of hock, pay some fines, and did I know my car was blocking the fire lane, and considering the Sig on the Harbor today, I was lucky I wasn’t causing a life-or-death scenario. Life-or-death scenario. That’s what the bureaucrats in parking violations said. Scenario.

  “Gee, Gabe,” Emi commiserated. “Missed a chance to use your AAA membership.” She dropped me off downtown, and I ran up to my desk with about an hour to pitch my budgets. I paged Buzzworm and waited.

  “Buzzworm. Angel of Mercy. At your service.”

  “Buzz. LAX thing went to a hospital just skirting downtown. What’s the deal?”

  “Got me.”

  “Go back to the brother who untapped it and get me some specifics. I don’t think it’s drugs.”

  “What about the article on my symphony man Manzanar? If I see it in print, maybe we might risk it.”

  “Buzz. This isn’t about tit for tat. One’s a feature. The other’s hardcore.”

  “Both’re hardcore. Drugs’s hardcore. Homelessness’s hardcore. Forty-two thousand citywide. Hundred-fifty countryside. That enough homeless for y
ou? Only thing, it’s not a crime to be homeless. Some jive radio show host saying should put ’em all to sleep. Could bring the Nazis back to do it too! Go back and interview Ted Hayes again, but don’t be giving me that feature bullshit. You see homeless bobbing like pigeons in the streets. What you think? Dropped their contact lenses? They looking for diamonds? Illegal tender? Oh yes. Turn a trick for a piece of the rock. Pathetic. It’s all part of the same system.”

  “Do I have to argue ideology? It’s too late in the day.”

  “Did you know I knew Salazar personally?”

  “Lot of Salazars, Buzz.”

  “The reporter. One who got killed. If he wanted to know something, he’d go to jail to find out. If he could, he’d be reporting now, direct from hell.”

  “Salazar’s in heaven. Aztlán, Buzz.”

  “No wonder he’s not saying nothing. Nothing to report.”

  Between Buzzworm and Emi, I needed a serious vacation. But I said, “Your man Manzanar wouldn’t speak with me. Reticent. Maybe if you came along.”

  “Maybe. Gimme a buzz.”

  I punched in my budgets: continuation of series on homelessness—overpass conductor (as in symphony orchestral); interview with Richard Iizuka, Supervising Agricultural Inspector for L.A. County Dept. of Ag, for update on medfly situation; Father’s Day postmortem—single fathers coping in South Central and East L.A.; gangs, contracts, and the attorneys who work for them. And, what the hell: possible spiked orange cause of major freeway SigAlert.

  Suddenly I felt really tired, reached for the cold coffee next to the keyboard. Maybe Rafaela would give me a call. Just a short call would do—my fix from down South. If I associated Emi with caffeine, maybe Rafaela was like Prozac. It was a balancing act. Who was I kidding? Mine was a mind game. L.A. was out there.

  WEDNESDAY:

  Cultural Diversity

  CHAPTER 15:

  Second MortgageChinatown

  Bobby got time to kill. Time before he meets the Chinatown snakehead gonna set his cousin free. Still don’t know this cousin. Got a call in to Singapore. Better talk to the folks. Find out the truth. Meantime, Bobby got time to kill. Hang out round the Chinese pharmacy. Check out the goods. Ginseng. $98.98/lb. On sale. Tangui. $8.89/lb. On sale. Woman’s root. Been some time, Bobby took Rafaela to Chinatown. Made her take tangui tea. After that, Sol got born. Got born fast. This time, check out a recipe to stop smoking. Maybe they got something like that. Sure enough. Shen qi jie yan ling. Miraculous Stop Smoking. Developed by the Institute of Clinical Immunology of Contemporary Traditional Chinese Medicine, No. 1 Shang Yuan Cun Hadian District, Beijing, China. Telephone: 8327721. Fax: 8328275. Awarded a gold medal by the thirty-seventh Brussels Eureka World’s Fair for Invention in 1988. Got medicative herbs: Fols Carthami, Radix Ginseng, Borneolum, Radix Sophorae Flavescents, Fadix Astragali, Pericarpium Zanthoxyli, Bulbus Fritillarae Cirrhosae, Fructus Corni, Rhizoma Atractylodis Alba, etc. Put the liquid near the nose and inhale once a day for ten to twenty-five minutes. Take deep, even breaths. After seven days, you lose it. In ten thousand cases, 98 percent lost it. Give it up. Miraculous Stop Smoking. Powerful stuff. That’s it.