by Carrie Asai
Sure enough, a row of steel pay phones glimmered under the station’s awning. The first one I tried didn’t have a dial tone, but the second one did. I scanned the directions pasted to the front of the box and read, “Information: Dial 411.” My hands shook as I punched the numbers and waited. Was there an offering for pay phone gods?
After a moment an electronic voice intoned, “What city, please?”
“I’m not sure,” I replied politely. There was a clicking sound, and suddenly a human voice filled the earpiece.
“What city?”
“I’m not sure what city,” I replied. “I’m looking for a Hiro Uyemoto? Do you have his number?”
The operator sounded bored. “You don’t know what city.”
“No. He lives in America,” I said as clearly as I could.
There was a loud sigh on the other end of the line. “Is this a joke?”
Had I said something wrong? “No…,” I said hopefully. “It’s just that I really need to find this person—it’s an emergency.”
“And you have no idea what city?”
Was my English really that bad? “No, but…he lives in America.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line, then another sigh, louder. “Look, I’d like to help you, but do you have any idea how many people there are in America?”
Oh. Well, now I felt pretty stupid. “Two hundred and eighty million?” I said in a squeaky voice.
“Something like that, yeah. If you can give me some idea what part of the country he lives in, then maybe I can help you. Maybe.”
Oh. “Um, okay. Thanks.” I blew out a breath. “I guess…can you try Los Angeles?”
The voice on the other end of the line sounded a little more sympathetic now. “Los Angeles? Can you spell the last name?”
I did.
“Not showing anything. You know, he might be unlisted.”
I frowned. “Unlisted? What do you mean?”
“I mean that not everyone wants their phone number in the directory. If he’s a private type, he might not be in our database at all.”
I leaned my head against the cool metal of the phone booth and tried not to cry. It had never occurred to me that Hiro might be unlisted. Which would make finding him about as easy as running through fields of wet rice.
“Okay,” I said. “I don’t know where else to look. But thanks for your help.”
“Good luck,” the voice replied, and I hung up the phone. Now what?
A shout pulled me out of my thoughts. I turned and saw two men running down the street. My father’s men? I wasn’t sure if it was me they were yelling at or not, but I wasn’t waiting around to find out. I ran behind the gas station and found myself face-to-face with a chain-link fence. To my right was a metal Dumpster, thankfully closed, and I hurled myself up on top of it. The fence bordered a backyard. I scrambled over it, hung from my fingertips for a second, then let myself drop.
What to do now?
I listened so hard, it felt like my ears were stretching. I had to have a plan, since I didn’t think whoever lived in the house—a smaller house than the ones I’d been passing—was going to be too happy to find a Japanese chick in a bloody kimono carrying a three-foot-long sword in their backyard. At least I couldn’t hear the shouting anymore—that was something.
“Is this where you saw her?”
A man’s voice, low and raspy, on the other side of the fence. Accented but not Japanese. All the saliva in my mouth dried up. I pressed myself tighter against the fence until I could feel the metal of the Dumpster on the other side. It was blocking me from sight. Kind Dumpster. Was there an offering you could make to the Dumpster gods? Something tickled my bare foot. Cockroaches. Oh, how gross! I’d only seen live cockroaches a few times on the streets of Tokyo. The Kogo compound was kept too spotless to harbor roaches or any other kind of vermin. I desperately fought the urge to squirm away, thinking, The garbage you want is over there, over there!
But clearly cockroaches don’t possess telepathic abilities. One of the creatures on my foot decided to scurry up my leg. I couldn’t take it anymore. I gave a tiny squeak.
“You hear something?” Raspy Voice asked.
I took off. My feet slid over the freshly watered grass. I went down but was up a second later. A low wooden fence separated this backyard from the next. I gathered my kimono up around my thighs and climbed over. Gravel bit into my bare feet, but I didn’t slow down. I tore past a small swimming pool, almost crashing into the hot tub. Another fence. Over it. Were they coming? Were they coming? All I could do was keep running.
I tripped on a lawn chair and sprawled to the grass. I ended up with my nose on a Star Style magazine. Staring at the celebs on the cover, I suddenly realized—Hiro lived in Hollywood. His number hadn’t been listed in L.A., but I was completely sure he lived here. Ohiko had mentioned it once, I remembered, and I teared up again as I pictured him talking about how we would go see the Hollywood sign in person someday, how we would drive up Mulholland all the way to the tops of the hills…. Now we’d never get to do that. My chest ached from holding back the sobs.
Stop it, I told myself. There’s no time for that now. Ohiko would want you to survive. I shoved myself to my feet and started running again. I had to get to Hollywood.
3
Running is not a plan, I thought. And anyway, I wasn’t exactly running anymore. It was more like hobbling, wheezing, my lungs burning, my poor feet numb with cold. I plodded to a stop in front of a place called Junior’s Liquor and Minimart. Iron bars covered the windows. Behind one set of bars I could see a tiny ratlike dog with huge ears. It saw me, too, and started to yip. “Quiet,” I wanted to tell it. “Be quiet.” I didn’t want anyone to notice me, not even the smallest dog I’d ever seen.
I smoothed my kimono with both hands—as if that would make me look like a nice, respectable girl that anyone would want to help! Go in there and ask how to get to Hollywood, I ordered myself. But three men sat on the cement steps leading to the minimart door. They smelled of alcohol and unwashed skin. One of the men’s pants had a huge rip in them, and before I could look away, I couldn’t help seeing a piece of his bare thigh. What would the men do if I tried to walk past them? Would they move? Would they grab me? Would they—
A group of children dressed in unfamiliar costumes walked out of the store. They tromped past the men without hesitation. They looked like they were about eleven or twelve. Were they old enough to help me?
“Cool,” said one whose face was smeared with green and black makeup as he checked me out.
“What are you?” asked another, wearing a helmet and carrying what looked like a hammer.
“Don’t be stupid,” said the only girl, who was dressed in black rags with a bloodred face and who was clearly the leader of the group. “She’s obviously a dead Japanese person.”
I laughed. How could this not be part of some bizarre dream?
“Exactly,” I said, trying to choose my words carefully and use my best American accent. “Can you tell me which way Hollywood is?”
“This is Hollywood,” the girl said, giving me a duh look, “but down there’s where all the parties are, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“What parties?” asked another boy, his voice muffled by a bear mask. The girl ignored him.
“Thanks,” I said. “Merry Halloween.”
“It’s not merry, it’s happy.” The boy giggled. I felt myself blush under the thick cake of white makeup on my face. My English was almost perfect, but I tended to mess up on the finer points.
“Shut up, stupid,” whispered the girl, hitting him with her pumpkin bucket. “She’s not American. She’s trying to be a dead Japanese person.”
But I could be, I thought suddenly. That was something I used to fantasize about when I was thirteen and Konishi said something that made me mad. The plane my parents died on was going to the United States. Maybe that’s where my life began. Maybe I should have been an all-American g
irl. I fought the crazy urge to explain myself to her and instead muttered, “Thanks,” and headed off.
I was in Hollywood, which was good. But I had no idea where in Hollywood Hiro lived, which was bad. I walked as I tried to figure out what to do, sticking to side streets and not venturing into backyards this time. The houses seemed to be getting smaller and shabbier. A lot of them had fences like the fancy houses I’d seen earlier, ugly fences of bars and mesh and wire, fences with dogs behind them, not little dogs like the one in the minimart, but big dogs with big snapping teeth. What is everyone so afraid of? I wondered. Why do they need all this protection? I couldn’t imagine there was anything in these little houses worth stealing. I wasn’t sure Hiro would live somewhere like this. After all, his family had a lot of money.
A helicopter flew by overhead, low, blades thrumming. The sound faded, then grew louder as the helicopter circled back over. I peered up at it and could see LAPD printed on its side. The police, I realized. Was it a good sign or a bad sign that they were flying so close?
I hit a main street again, and I smiled in spite of myself. I knew this place from the movies. The Sunset Strip! Across the street was a purple-and-yellow building topped by a huge sign that read Whisky A Go-Go. I could hear music pouring out from inside it. The door opened and a tall black man wearing only a tiny gold bikini bottom and a huge pair of glittery gold wings strutted out. His chest seemed as wide as I was tall. I’d never seen anyone like him. Or like the woman with a snake—a live snake—wrapped around her neck who came out the door after him.
I stuck the Whisper of Death in my obi. The sword made it a bit awkward to walk, but was certainly safer for the other pedestrians on the crowded street. I turned off the Strip again—Hiro clearly didn’t live here—and wandered. What in the hell was I supposed to do now? I couldn’t walk through the streets of Hollywood knocking on every door: “Sorry to bother you, but does a Japanese man about six feet tall with black hair and black eyes live here? No? Okay, thanks for your help.”
After a few blocks I came to a house where a big party was clearly going on. The guests had spilled out onto the porch and the front lawn. I stood on the sidewalk for a few minutes trying to get up the courage to go in. I could find a bathroom, drink some water, and maybe ask around about Hiro. After all, he was about these people’s age. And it certainly didn’t seem like anyone was going to kick me out. It wasn’t like at one of my father’s functions, where guards stood at the doors and made sure that no one without an invitation, and certainly no reporters, would wheedle their way in.
A girl came up and grabbed me by the arm, talking fast in a high little voice. She was shorter than me, even though she was wearing gigantic rainbow-colored platforms and a huge blond Afro wig. “What?” I felt a moment of panic when I realized I couldn’t understand what she was saying. What if I really had forgotten all my English since Katie left? What if I only remembered enough to talk to children?
“This is Cheryl’s party. Don’t you know her, Yuki?” Afro Platform Girl screamed over the thumping bass.
I understood her that time. That was something. Should I pretend to be Yuki? I wondered. What if Yuki showed up? What if Yuki didn’t have an accent? Mine was slight, according to Katie, but you could still hear it.
“Not like it matters,” the girl continued. “I’m sure she doesn’t know half the people here. Why don’t you go stab a deer?”
“What?”
“Grab a beer!”
“Oh. Yes. Is there a bathroom?”
“Just go straight once you get inside. It’s at the end of the hall.”
She danced off to another group of people on the sun-bleached lawn, and I quickly climbed the stairs, dodging clay pots of brightly colored flowers, keeping my head down. For the first time I was grateful for the white face makeup—it might keep me from being recognized as an imposter. Not that I really had to worry about it. The inside of the house was so dark and so crowded that I could barely see anything at all, which meant no one could see me. I pushed my way down the hall, which was strung with tiny orange lights and wisps of cotton that I guess were intended to represent cobwebs. Americans were a very cluttered people, I thought.
There was a line for the bathroom, and it was all I could do to keep from sinking to the floor right there. I took my place in line, leaning against the wall and surveying the scene. My first real American party. And I was here under the worst circumstances I could imagine. What if I was part American? I wondered. I mean, I was obviously at least half Japanese, but it was possible that either my mother or father had been American. Maybe I was on JAL 999 headed home to L.A. with my real parents. My dad would be a…hmmm…a movie director! And he would let me come on the set with him and meet the movie stars. My mom would be…hmmm…a yoga instructor. The perfect L.A. couple. And I would have grown up an all-American girl, eating hamburgers and going to ’N Sync concerts. I would have a pink room, plastered with posters of my favorite celebrities….
“Come on, Kimono Girl. It’s your turn.”
Oops. I stumbled into the bathroom and locked the door behind me. I searched around the grubby pink sink for some soap—nothing. I pulled back the shower curtain, which was a moldy, sad shade of melon. Yes. I grabbed the bar of soap from the little cubby and started to work on my face. After most of my makeup was gone, I turned on the cold tap and drank until my stomach couldn’t hold any more. I’d never been so thirsty in my life. I wiped my face on my kimono and rummaged around on the shelves for something to tie back my hair, which had fallen from its elaborate ’do into a bunch of lopsided chunks hanging around my face and in my eyes. My hair was long and heavy—it was fine, but there was a lot of it. I found an elastic and pulled my hair back into a ponytail, then surveyed myself in the mirror. Not bad.
Well, actually, pretty awful—my fingernails were dirty from when I’d fallen in the yard, and my kimono was mud-stained and stiff with dried blood. A few streaks of the white makeup just wouldn’t come off, and my face was red and puffy from all the hot water and scrubbing. At least the house was dark. I looked down at the toilet, which was exceedingly gross. No choice. I hiked up my kimono.
“We all gotta go, sister!” Someone started banging on the door, which made it a lot harder to get my bladder to cooperate.
“Just one second.” I closed my eyes again and imagined myself in my own bathroom at home, which was decorated in sea-foam green tiles, with a small waterfall that trickled down a series of tiny steps leading up from the recessed tub. At home the taps on the tub were small gold dragons, the faucet was a dolphin’s mouth, and the room always smelled of jasmine and sage because it was cleaned every day by our dedicated team of servants.
That did the trick.
I stood up, flushed, ran my hands under the faucet, took a deep breath, and opened the door.
“About time,” griped a boy who seemed to think that his pair of enormous yellow sunglasses qualified as an entire costume.
I slid past him and wandered back down the hall. In a main room people were dancing, holding their drinks in the air as they moved to the music provided by the DJ, whose table was set up in the corner. I recognized the Michelle Branch song blasting from the stereo, and it felt weird that I had been listening to the same thing in Tokyo just a few weeks before. I felt dizzy and confused, like I could no longer tell the difference between a few years ago and a few minutes ago. But I’d always been that way, and I think it was because I was always ready to meet my real parents, always ready to forget who I’d been and get ready to become something else. Maybe that’s why the loss of my brother shifted so easily in and out of my consciousness.
Everyone looked so happy to be at the party. I smiled to myself, and a salty ball formed in my throat when I thought again of Ohiko—we always used to talk about going to America together. No, I told myself, just keep going. Be strong.
I wove my way around the dancers to a couch that was pushed up against the wall on the other side of the room. I flopped do
wn and propped the Whisper of Death between my knees. The couch was old and soft—pure bliss. I wiggled my toes and hoped that no one would notice me. Or notice that I wasn’t Yuki. Most of the people at the party seemed about my age, but I’d only ever seen people my age behaving this way in the movies. Girls and boys kissed in corners. Had they known each other for years? Were their parents best friends and all that? Or had they just met tonight?
I watched a guy slide his hand up a girl’s leg and under her short skirt. What would that feel like? I jerked my head away when I realized I was staring.
“Hey.” A tall boy with spiky blond hair wearing denim overalls sat down next to me. “That’s a really sweet costume.”
“Thanks.” I tried to smile but couldn’t quite manage it. Could he tell what I’d been thinking about? Did it show on my face?
“So, how do you know Cheryl?” Spiky Hair shoved a lime wedge into his beer bottle and held it out to me.
I shook my head, searching for the right words. “I don’t exactly know her,” I admitted. My heart started pounding.
“That’s okay—most people here don’t. I don’t.” He took a long swig of his beer. I watched his throat muscles move.
“That’s what I heard,” I told him.
His brow furrowed for a second—had I said the wrong thing? “You heard I don’t know her?” he asked.
“No, I mean, I heard a lot of people here don’t.” I shoved a loose piece of hair back into my ponytail.
“Oh, yeah. Exactly.” His face relaxed. I felt like a big imposter. I’d never had to make small talk at a Halloween party with a stranger before. Actually, I rarely spoke to strangers unless they were colleagues of my father’s who I saw at social functions, and then I’d been told only to speak in response to questions, never to initiate conversation on my own. They usually asked me one or two polite questions about my studies before escaping into conversations with other men. When Ohiko had friends over, I would joke around with them if my father wasn’t there, but that was in Japanese.
