Tropic of Orange

by Karen Tei Yamashita

  “Phone’s cellular, Buzz. Better keep it to yourself. Could be a reason for letting you use it.”

  “You coming down?”

  “Gimme an hour.”

  “Limousine Way?”

  “Limousine Way.”

  I grabbed my stuff, stashed my notes in a folder. While I was talking to Buzzworm, I had been circling a word in Rafaela’s conversation. It popped out of the notes on the page: Package. She was sending me a package. What package? One hundred and one ways to move shit. I made my decision; I would make that meeting in México City, get a reading on C. Juárez and the orange connection and take a detour to my place to check up on Rafaela. Even though Buzzworm had counseled me on the nature of hardcore news, I knew what he knew: the homeless weren’t going away. On the other hand, the very tail of a conspiracy was whipping about just out of my reach; either I grabbed it now or never.

  CHAPTER 26:

  Life InsuranceL.A./T.J.

  The beeper goes off. Who’s it gonna be? Maybe it’s that postediting place in Hollywood. Go into editing some movie night and day. Trash cans get stuffed with pizza boxes and takeout. Toilet paper disappears. Toilets get clogged good with paper towels and shit. Bobby seen ’em clogged with condoms and syringes. Bobby don’t ask no questions. He just comes in twice if they give him the call.

  Or maybe it’s the place in El Segundo makes bombs. Gotta haul out the shredded paper. Anybody ask any questions, he’s got a clearance. After everything, they never figured out he’s not Vietnam. Not no orphan with no connections to nothing. Orphan refugee can’t be communist. Gotta be happy he’s alive in America. Saved by the Americans. New country. New life. Working hard to make it. American through and through. Clearance proves it. He can haul out all the shredded documents he can carry. Doing America a favor. Doing his duty. That’s it.

  Anybody ask, he’s legal. Casualty of the war. Responsibility of the victor, the aggressor, the big loser. Nowadays, they’re saying you can go back. See the homeland. It’s not a problem. Vietcong’ll let you in. Everything’s cheap in Vietnam. You can live there like a king. Don’t he know? All the Vietnam folks owning donut shops are taking the trip. He don’t say nothing. Pretends he was too little to remember. Too little to remember Saigon. Now it’s a musical. Miss Saigon. Miz Saigon. Don’t you miss Saigon?

  Bobby misses Singapore. Only thing people know about Singapore is you can’t do graffiti. Even white kids get flogged. People saying taggers here oughta get flogged too. Flog ’em big-time. Been so long, can’t remember the Singapore they’re talking about. Skyscrapers, rich people, business like it’s never gonna stop. Maybe he shoulda never left; cleaning buildings here, cleaning ’em there. What’s the diff? Well, might be being Chinese in Singapore’s different than being Vietnamese in the U.S.

  Somebody says, “What’d we do without you, Bobby? You saving our lives. Without you nothing gets done around here.” It’s an exaggeration. Bobby don’t hold nothing by it. Way of saying, who’s gonna clean up if it isn’t you? Gonna be some other refugee needs the work. Still it’s likely the job doesn’t get done as good. Bobby’s proud of his business, proud of his rep. He disappears, they gotta get along with something less than clean.

  What day’s today? The 25th. Insurance on the life due. Bobby bought himself term. Half’s for the wife and son; half’s for his brother. They’re depending on him. It’s a chunk. Not a lot, but a chunk. When he can, he’ll put in for more. Pretty soon he’ll be worth more dead than alive. Dead, he’ll be some kind of lottery. Then again, if he never finds Rafaela and the boy, what’s it gonna matter?

  For now, he’s gotta run. Gotta answer the beep. Turns out it’s not Hollywood. Not the war machine in El Segundo neither. It’s Gabriel, the Chicano reporter. Gabriel’s like the li’l bro. Got an education. Like the kid brother, got consciousness about what’s it to be a minority. Required course: cultural politics. Gabriel was reading Rafaela’s papers for the community college. Correcting the spelling. Telling her to keep up the good work. Getting articles out of the system to put in the papers. Putting ideas into Rafaela’s head. Now he’s on the phone, telling Bobby he’s got news about Rafaela. They better talk. Figures. Bobby like to smack him, but he better get Rafaela and the kid back first. Then he’ll smack him.

  Gabriel’s saying how about this afternoon? Got a minute to talk? He’s between assignments. Has Bobby seen the mess on the freeway? He’s really busy, but—

  Bobby can’t do it. He doesn’t say that he’s got three hundred dollars to the snakehead to check out the girl cousin cross the border. Today. He’s gotta run. Give it to him straight on the phone.

  It’s more complicated than that. Gabriel’s gotta draw a map. Why’s he telling Bobby this now?

  Because Rafaela wants Bobby to know. At least that’s what he thinks. Because he’s lost contact with her. Because he’s got a lot of things in the works. Someone else’s got to get involved. Because there’s some kind of trouble.

  What trouble?

  Don’t know.

  What’s she mixed up in? Gone down to join the Zapatistas? What about the boy?

  Gabriel didn’t think of that.

  Didn’t think of that?

  No.

  What did he think?

  Not that.

  Didn’t he read her papers? Bobby been reading them at night. Taking the Miraculous Stop Smoking and reading. Pile of them left on a shelf. Titles like Maquiladoras & Migrants. Undocumented, Illegal & Alien: Immigrants vs. Immigration. Talks about globalization of capital. Capitalization of poverty. Internationalization of the labor force. Exploitation and political expediency. Devaluation of currency and foreign economic policy. Economic intervention. Big words like that. Enough to get back smoking again. Maybe he’s been too busy. Maybe. But it’s not like he don’t understand. Prop 187. Keep illegals out of schools and hospitals. They could pass all the propositions they want. People like him and Rafaela weren’t gonna just disappear.

  But she did.

  Bobby wants to know: How’s she living? She’s gonna need some money.

  Don’t worry about that for now.

  She’s my family. That’s my son. We don’t live off no one. No one.

  Listen. Reporter’s gotta make a business trip to México anyway. He’ll check up on Rafaela, call Bobby soon as he knows something.

  Bobby unlocks The Club on the Camaro. Gonna make the ride down to T.J. Been awhile since he done it. Boy’s car seat still in the back. Take him two hours if he’s lucky. 5 to the 805. Pull up to San Ysidro and make the crossover on foot. Same clanging gates. Like you can’t pass quietly. Can’t tiptoe in or out. Indian mommas, Mixtecs, and Mayans and their kids lined up on blankets selling Subcommandante Marcos dolls, Our Lady of Guadalupe, bubble gum, and plastic cactuses. Traffic stopped up like usual. Lines of cars and trucks waiting to jump the border, moving up one at a time. Who knows what’s crossing to the other side? Gifts from NAFTA. Oranges, bananas, corn, lettuce, guaraches, women’s apparel, tennis shoes, radios, electrodomestics, live-in domestics, living domestics, gardeners, dishwashers, waiters, masons, ditch diggers, migrants, pickers, packers, braceros, refugees, centroamericanos, wetbacks, wops, undocumenteds, illegals, aliens.

  It’s time. T.J. taxi slows down at his corner. Girl’s Chinese. Just like her picture, but thinner. Scared. She’s staring out the window. Something in her eyes. Maybe if Rafaela could read her palms. . . . It’s not like it’s his sister. It’s like it’s maybe twenty years ago. Like it’s him and his kid brother fresh off the boat. It’s just a glimpse. But it lasts forever. Twenty years goes by in a glimpse.

  CHAPTER 27:

  Live on AirEl A

  “Where are you?”

  “Creative Cuts.”

  “You’re editing? What poor schlock’s B celluloid are you chopping up for prime time now?”

  “Gabe, Creative Cuts is my hairdresser’s in Torrance. I just got a shampoo and trim. Now I’m getting a cellophane and a weave.”

  �
��Trim, cellophane, weave. It still sounds like editing.”

  “So how’s my soft-boiled detective?”

  “You’d think I’d be hard-boiled by now judging by the heat down here.”

  “Ouuuu. Sounds satanic. Where are you?”

  “L.A.’s latest gala disaster, Angel. One more day of the locust. You said it yourself. Les Miz on the pedestrian freeway.”

  “There you go again trying to be part of a book. What do they all say? El A is A-pocalypse. It’s bee ess I tell you. Earthquakes. Riots. Fires. Floods. It’s just natural phenomena: earth, wind, fire, water.”

  “Sounds like a sixties band.”

  “Gabe, you can’t be at a phone booth.”

  “No. I’m running up the tab on a cellular in a gold Mercedes.”

  “Can you see the NewsNow van from there? It’s smack dab in the middle. Gabe, look around. Microwave’s up at least ten feet. It’s a goddamn phallus!”

  “NewsNow van? What’s it doing here? You lower it in by helicopter for the occasion?”

  “A fortunate accident really. We’re pumping up to CNN. Hey, I can see you now on the baby Sony. Gold Mercedes. 300SEL, isn’t it? Gold package. Gold rims. Oouu. There you are, down in the middle of a true current event. Live on the air! You are the reality on TV. God I’m jealous. On the Richter scale from natural to human, what would you give this one?”

  “On the Nielson, what would you give this one?”

  “Listen. You’re pre-empting The Simpsons, Married with Children, and Margaret Cho!”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Gabe, about the orange thing. They’ve cleaned out the city. I was down at Farmer’s Market getting cheese knishes and an espresso. Every last orange’s been carted out. It’s like the Chilean grape thing but bigger. Bigger than Tylenol capsules laced with cyanide or syringes in Coke cans. Have you even heard? You’re so isolated by your assignments.”

  “That’s what I like about you. The buzz of L.A.”

  “And don’t forget my insider scoop on the boys in the Porsche. Remember, they were eating sex-tions of oranges.” Gabriel could almost see her lips move through the cellular. She continued, “Some’re saying it’s orange trees growing in poppy fields in Bolivia. Others say it’s a dangerous tropical virus, like flesh-eating bacteria. Can you believe it? Oranges with cancer. Carves a hole in your brain in twenty-four hours. Who’s gonna drink O.J. for breakfast ever again? And you thought coffee stunted your growth.”

  “Emi, I need a favor.”

  “Sure. Dump the orange marmalade? It’s done. The bath salts à l’orange? Orange pekoe tea bags? Chocolate covered citrus sticks? All history. What about the Trader Joe’s chewable vitamin C?”

  “We’re liable to get scurvy.”

  “Scurvy. Didn’t Columbus bring that disease to the New World?”

  “I’m serious about a favor. I need you to take over my beat for a few days.”

  “You want me to go down there?”

  “We’ll be in touch by phone and fax. I promise you won’t have to write anything. Just take notes. Keep the details.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “South.”

  “You mean Orange County? So what? They’re broke. Gonna follow that Citrus man to his derivative stock brokers?”

  “It’s Citron.”

  “Citrus. Citron. O.J. What’s the diff?”

  “You drive me crazy. Emi, I’m going to México.”

  “I know you’re stressed, sweetheart, but is this any time for a vacation?”

  “It’s not a vacation.”

  “Returning to your roots? Pilgrimage to the source?”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “Of course. Do you know what a ticket to Japan costs? Dollar to yen dropped again. Do you know what a cup of coffee at Narita goes for? If I had the urge, do I have the financial backing to even get close to my roots?”

  “Emi, your roots are in Gardena. It’s just a toll call.”

  “Whaddya want me to do?”

  “Talk to my contact here. Get more on Manzanar Murakami. And just stand by.”

  “And you?”

  “It’s a hunch. Something’s brewing down there, connected to stuff here. I need you to be here. I need you to help me put it together.”

  “I can’t believe you’d leave at a time like this. That freeway story’s gotta be big.”

  “And it’s not going away. Besides, you can handle it, Angel.”

  Emi fumed, “I suppose I should be honored.”

  “One more favor. Keep a lookout for a package. Let me know if it arrives.”

  Emi plopped the cellular down and stared deep into the mirror before her. “Evelyn,” she apologized to her hairdresser who was carefully wrapping bits of her hair into aluminum foil, “Can you do a stepped-up version? I gotta run.”

  By the afternoon, Emi had shed the female executive attire for dress-down jeans, Nikes, and a baseball cap, slipped her credit cards, lipstick, gum, and electronic necessities into a backpack, briefcase, and two duffel bags and traded places with Gabriel at the appointed spot on Limousine Way.

  “What’s with the baseball cap?” Gabriel asked.

  “Bad hair day,” Emi growled, dropping her belongings at his feet.

  “What is all this?” Gabriel moaned at Emi’s luggage.

  “If I’m going to do this, I’ve got to be comfortable.”

  Buzzworm moved his stature into full prominence and took a look at Emi. “Balboa, this is your replacement?”

  “I am not a replacement,” Emi sneered. “Where did they find you? In the extra line for In Living Color?”

  “Balboa, what we got Judge Ito’s smart-assed baby sister for? And how many times a day does she change?”

  Two contradictions sized each other up. There was no way in hell they could see eye to eye, but Gabriel said, “Emi, this is Buzzworm, my primo contact in the city scene. Buzz, meet Emi, friend and confidante. I know you’re both going to really hit it off. This is going to be a working relationship—”

  “Made in hell,” acknowledged Emi.

  Gabriel nervously noticed Buzzworm swiveling through the channels on his Walkman, searching for a hook. Not a good sign.

  “What are you doing?” Emi sassed the Buzz-man.

  “Baby sister, I’m looking for some relief. There are no vibes in here to match yours and none to counter them.”

  “Is he for real?”

  Gabriel scratched the stubble on his goatee.

  “Listen, let’s get on with this.” Emi cut a path for herself, crisscrossing through the messy encampment of stalled traffic and temporary housing toward the NewsNow van. “If you need anything, I’ll be in my office.” She handed Gabriel her backpack. “Would you mind?”

  Gabriel slumped suddenly under the weight of the backpack and two duffel bags but motioned to Buzzworm to follow. Buzzworm sauntered behind reluctantly. “We look like a goddamn safari,” he muttered. “Balboa, you would be attached to some Asian Princess.”

  “Buzz, trust me. The woman’s incorrigible.”

  “You got that.”

  Reporters at the NewsNow van snapped to happy attention. Obviously Emi was a sight for sore eyes. “Well, how are we today?” she exclaimed like a nurse on duty and proceeded to empty the treasure in her bags. “Luey, have I got something for you,” she motioned to the cameraman. “See? Batteries! Half dozen fresh bricks. Fire it up. We got another twenty-four hours!” For Kay Torres, on-the-scene reporter, there was lipstick and mascara and a camouflage jump suit. For Kerry, the technician, there were more batteries and cables, mikes, and a second IFB.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t help you with that load,” Buzzworm said to Gabriel with some residual sincerity as Emi produced everything from Cokes and Big Macs to toilet paper, flak jackets, sunscreen, Bufferin, $350 in small bills, and a gallon Gatorade jug filled with gasoline.

  Gabriel rubbed his shoulder. “Why didn’t you tell me I could have blown up? What’s this for? You planning
a revolution? Besides, there’s plenty of gas down here.”

  “It’s for the van’s generator. Can’t take any chances. I’ve got to plug my stuff in, too.” Emi pulled out a laptop complete with modem, connecting printer, and fax. “Luey, draw me a cable and hook us up.” A second laptop, twin to the first, she pushed on Gabriel. “It’s just like a typewriter, see. Except, you can talk to me.” She handed him the credit card modem. “Initiation into the net by fire, Gabe. You take this to México. We’re gonna boogie!”

  Gabriel looked helpless.

  Buzzworm shook his head. “Nope, Balboa. I guess she isn’t your replacement.”

  Emi set her operation up on the dash, settled a thermal cup of latté in its holder and scribbled directives on yellow stickies. “Gabe, this is the pager number. This is the cellular. This is the fax. And this is the address on the net. For godssake, memorize this.”

  Gabriel stuffed the numbers in his pocket, propped the computer under his arm, and joined Buzzworm in the van door, staring at the action in the small monitors of this mobile tech station. Kerry, the technician, explained, “This is what’s on air now. This is the view from the helicopter, and this is what we’ve just finished taping down here.”

  “Can you talk to the helicopter and pull in the view of that man on the overpass?” Gabriel pointed.

  Kerry channeled up to the copter for a close-up of Manzanar.

  Emi leaned back. “Gabe, you’d better go. Got a plane to catch.” She pecked Gabriel on the cheek. “Don’t leave me here too long.”

  “That’s him,” Gabriel pointed at the monitor and Manzanar’s full face of anguished concentration.

  Emi stared at that face in disbelief. She knew this face. She knew it intimately from some time in the past. She knew this very man.

  Gabriel had returned the kiss, spoken his last words of good-bye, said he’d be in touch in a few hours, not to worry, thanks, thanks, take care of her, Buzz, to which Buzzworm had answered, “Who me? Take care of her?” Yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. Later. Later. By the time Emi could tear her eyes from the reality on the screen, from a real-time moment of recognition, Gabriel was on his way.