Snakeskin Shamisen Read online

  Mas himself started to think of ways to escape from this pitiful man. “I go eat,” he announced, and Jiro didn’t put up a fight. He seemed to understand that hunger was a desire that could not be postponed.

  Mas picked up a white ceramic dish and a pair of disposable wooden chopsticks. He tore the paper sleeve off the chopsticks and stuffed the paper in his jeans pocket. He knew all about these johin types, fancy-schmancy women who folded this throwaway paper into a chrysanthemum-shaped chopstick holder. But this was a no-nonsense buffet where nobody cared about presentation or looks. The whole point was food, and lots of it. Hugging the plate to his chest, Mas snapped the chopsticks at the seam and rubbed the hashi against each other to shave off any splinters. Biting his lips, he was now ready to partake and to partake big.

  The only problem was the old hakujin man in front of him. He was at the Chinese chicken salad station, carefully maneuvering the tongs so as to avoid any wonton strips. Bakamitai, thought Mas, like a fool. Mas didn’t have time for such nonsense and dug his chopsticks—at least he was johin enough to use the back side of them—into a corner of the pan, lifting out lettuce, mandarin orange slivers, and, yes, plenty of wonton strips onto his plate. The leaves of the lettuce glistened in a dressing smelling of sugar and sesame oil.

  “Mas? Mas Arai?” The man with the tongs had temporarily halted his mission and looked down. Mas nearly dropped his chopsticks.

  “Mista Parker.” As soon as Mas said it, he wished he could take it back. When he had known Edwin Parker, he had only been a mister, but Mas had read that he was now a judge. Had been, actually, for twenty years.

  “Good to see you, Mas. It’s been a long, long time. You look the same.”

  Parker, for the most part, hadn’t changed either. He still had most of his thick hair, only it was now yellowish white instead of copper brown. He stood erect and wore his blue polo shirt as if he were in a suit and tie. The Parkers had lived in Pasadena in a white Southern-style house with an expansive wooden porch bordered by an insect-infested gardenia bush.

  “You live in same place?”

  “Yes.” Judge Parker nodded.

  There was an awkward silence then. The Parkers had let Mas go because they felt that he didn’t use enough color in his landscaping. What was wrong with green? Mas thought. Couldn’t these city folks see the different shades—from the waxy deep green of the gardenia leaves to the bright green of young palms to the blue green of certain pine trees? There was beauty in all those different hues. Were they so blind that they needed brash reds and silly pinks?

  But Mas had taken his last check from the Parkers without complaint. The Parkers had always been on the urusai side, the type to always call Mas about a leaky sprinkler or dying ficus. His business was still going strong at the time, and who needed an urusai two-bit lawyer and his wife to spoil things?

  “Whatchu—” Mas began, and stopped himself. Who cared why Judge Parker was there? None of my business, Mas told himself.

  But the judge read Mas’s mind. “I’m on the board of the Japanese American Bar Association. G. I.’s the president, of course.”

  So Judge Parker was running in the same circles as G. I. What a strange world this was. Mas didn’t know what a hakujin judge would have to do with a Japanese legal group, but then again there would be merits in brushing elbows with the many high-profile Japanese judges these days. G. I. had told Mas that many had gotten into law because of camp—the American World War II detention camps that had held their parents, aunts, and uncles in barren deserts and swamplands simply for having Japanese names. Now these judges were meting out justice, but instead of preserving civil rights, their decisions dealt with sports stars and car designers.

  “And you know G. I…?” Judge Parker asked.

  Mas waited. What could he say? That G. I. had once bailed a friend out and also found a criminal lawyer to represent Mas’s daughter? That didn’t sound too good, so Mas instead offered, “Friend of a friend.” That much was true. Mas didn’t want to keep making small talk, because what good did it do either of them? Judge Parker must have been feeling the same way. “Well, good to see you, Mas. You take care of yourself,” he said, taking his wontonless salad into the crowd of people.

  Finally alone, Mas went down the buffet line. There was no need for more salad, because lettuce took up too much room on the plate. A healthy spoonful of sesame chicken, globs of crunchy fried dough dipped in a sweet syrup and sprinkled with roasted sesame seeds. Then chashu, slices of roasted pork, the soft middle the color of worn shoe leather, but the outside a bright reddish pink like a harlot’s painted rouge. A pile of kalua pig, shredded like dried-up grass. Tofu salad, cubes of diced bean curd with diced tomatoes, green onion, and bean sprouts, soaking in a dressing of shoyu—or soy sauce, as the hakujin liked to call it—ginger, and rice vinegar. The obligatory bacon-fried rice and chow mein, soft noodles in a tangle of snap peas, carrots, and chicken. And last of all, a line of Spam musubi organized like soldiers marching to war.

  Mas’s plate was so full that his Spam musubi rested on top of an ocean of chow mein. He headed first toward the bar, but lawyers had taken up all the seats. He didn’t want to sit at any of the round tables, because he didn’t want to make conversation with any old ladies or hear the whining of small children. He finally opted for the corner of the stage. It was abandoned; obviously the entertainment was over or yet to start for a while. Balanced on a stand beside the microphones was a Japanese instrument shaped like a banjo, the kind that geisha and old men in kimono plucked while sitting on their knees. A shamisen. Usually the box of the instrument was covered with white animal skin, but this one had the skin of a snake instead, shiny and taut.

  Leaning against the edge of the stage, Mas placed his overflowing plate a few inches away from the shamisen. He decided to tackle his food in layers and first took hold of the Spam musubi. The taste and texture of the soy sauce–dipped Spam, salty and thick and juicy, merged perfectly with the bland gentleness of the sticky rice.

  “It’s Okinawan.” A Sansei woman stood next to Mas. She wore a couple of colorful woven fabric bracelets around her tanned wrists.

  Mas raised the half-eaten musubi.

  She shook her head no and pointed to the musical instrument. “The shamisen, I mean. I think it’s called a sanshin in Okinawan. My grandfather used to play one.”

  Why would I care? Mas wondered.

  “Juanita Gushiken. I’m G. I.’s girlfriend.” She held out her hand.

  Mas stuffed the whole musubi into his mouth and wiped the grease onto his jeans. Couldn’t the girl see that he was busy eating? Mas wondered as he quickly gripped her callused hand.

  “And you’re Mas Arai, the detective gardener,” she went on.

  Mas swallowed a lump of the Spam musubi. Detective? What kind of stories was G. I. spreading? “Detective” had a bad connotation in Mas’s mind. It was okay for television shows, but not in real life. Detectives stuck their noses in other people’s business, and worst of all, they took money for it.

  “That’s what G. I. calls you,” Juanita went on. “He said that you probably could beat my butt. I’m a PI myself. You know, a private investigator. G. I. and I met on a slip-and-fall case. The insurance company hired me to spy on his client. Of course, my client won the case. One thing about G. I., he’s not a sore loser.”

  Mas had a hard time making sense out of Juanita Gushiken. He didn’t know where she came from, but Gushiken was a one-of-a-kind name. An Okinawan name that went with the snakeskin shamisen. Mas didn’t know much about Okinawa, other than it was a string of islands right below the main southern smudge of Japan. Okinawans were Japanese by citizenship, but there were some distinctions. Okinawans were known as being hairy and big boned. Peace lovers, yet the ones who had developed karate. Pork eaters who lived forever, or at least longer than any other humans in the world. Mas knew his share of Okinawan gardeners, but most of them kept to themselves, just like Mas stuck to other Hiroshima people, lik
e Haruo.

  Mas took a better look at Juanita. Although she did have a full head of jet-black hair cut bluntly at her chin, she didn’t look particularly hairy, aside from her eyebrows, furry like freshwater lures. One sign of her Okinawa roots right there, thought Mas. Her body wasn’t squat but lean. She wore a sleeveless top, which showcased her muscles. Mas figured that Juanita was at least forty years old but in a body most thirty-year-olds could only dream of. The kind of body that Jiro chased around in the little imagination that he had.

  G. I. and his entourage had circulated throughout the room and back to the stage.

  “Mas,” G. I. said, “you’ve met Juanita.”

  G. I. looked happy, the happiest Mas had ever seen him. The scars on his cheeks, remnants of a teenage skin condition, were barely noticeable in the dim light. He had trimmed his ponytail so that it didn’t look like a horse’s tail anymore. In lieu of a watch, he had the same woven bracelets as Juanita around his wrist. In addition to the white lei, he had on a white shirt; in fact, his whole body seemed lit up as if he and not his friend had won the half million dollars.

  G. I. put his arm around a man next to him. “This is the jackpot winner, my good buddy Randy Yamashiro. Randy, this is Mas, Mas Arai. The gardener I was telling you about.”

  “Hey.” Instead of extending his hand, Randy merely nodded his head toward Mas. Mas blinked his eyes in return. Mas didn’t care for shaking anybody’s hand, and apparently this Randy felt the same way. For Mas, it dated back to Chizuko’s preoccupation with the dirt underneath his fingernails. He was trained to hide them, and certainly not show them off to strangers.

  Randy was barrel-chested, sturdy as a bag of fertilizer. His eyes looked a bit puffy, as if someone had banged his eye sockets a couple of times—a sign of hard living and one too many beers, Mas thought. Randy had an unlit cigarette in his lips. Mas couldn’t help but feel a pang of envy; he wouldn’t have minded a Marlboro just about now. Randy seemed to read a recovering addict’s mind.

  “At Vegas I got used to smoking indoors,” he said, removing the cigarette from his mouth.

  “Mas kicked the habit a couple of years ago,” G. I. explained. “Got to live long for his grandson.”

  Mas grunted, and Randy reciprocated with a grunt of his own.

  Mas sensed that Randy was a quiet man, nothing much like his photo in The Rafu Shimpo. Mas had a notion that men from Hawaii were always smiley and full of laughter. But it was obvious that laughter had left Randy Yamashiro long ago.

  “Saw youzu pic-cha in the newspaypah,” said Mas.

  “Yeah,” Randy said, looking embarrassed. “The casino PR chick wrote all that stuff and had our picture taken.”

  “C’mon,” said G. I. “Don’t be so Japanese. Five hundred grand! That’s a big deal.”

  Randy returned his cigarette to his mouth and shrugged his shoulders.

  Mas didn’t know what to say to the sullen winner. “Youzu see Haruo or Tug?” he asked G. I. instead.

  “They left already. They didn’t want to stay too late, I guess.”

  In a way, Mas was relieved. He could take only small batches of people at a time, and today he had already met enough strangers to last him the rest of the year.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen,” interrupted a tall man carrying a camera. He wore a safari vest and red-framed glasses. “May I get you all together for a group photograph?”

  Mas narrowed his eyes. Didn’t look Japanese, but then who said he had to be? Mas remembered that the photographer’s byline in The Rafu Shimpo had a Latino name. They were all touched by Latinos in California and the rest of the Southwest. Since Mas had worked the lettuce and tomato harvesting circuit when he first returned to the U.S., he should have been used to the mix of cultures, but it always seemed to catch him off guard.

  “Sure, sure,” G. I. responded, but the rest of the group weren’t as eager.

  “And the musicians in the back—” The photographer addressed the two men who had begun setting up sheets of music on stands. They must have been a father-and-son team; they had the same long, sad-dog faces, except the older one’s hair was a brilliant silver as bright as a full moon. They both wore matching black kimono and hakama, long, flowing pants. They waved their hands in front of their faces, a sign that they wanted to refrain from the photo opportunity.

  The group pushed Mas, the shortest in the bunch, forward. Then Mas felt someone new at his side. The freckle-faced man, Jiro. From the corner of his eye, Mas spied Juanita rolling her eyes. She didn’t think much of G. I. and Randy’s Vietnam War comrade; that was clear. G. I. whispered something in her ear—maybe telling her to behave?

  “Say cheese,” said the photographer, and Mas mouthed “Chee-su” as the flash went off. He didn’t think he was smiling; he might have been clenching his teeth, in fact.

  The father-and-son musician team waited patiently as the group dispersed to make room for their performance. Mas headed for the bar. The televised football game had finished, and all bar stools were open now. “Sapporo,” he told the bartender, and the beer bottle was twisted open, letting out a mist like the smoke from a lit cigarette. The bottle was nice and cold, and Mas enjoyed letting the bitterness dance on his tongue. This party was not half-bad, he thought to himself.

  Another man in his seventies perched on a stool beside Mas. He hunched over as if he didn’t want anyone to see his face. He, too, had heavy bags under his eyes—didn’t anyone sleep at night anymore? Mas wondered. The man ordered sake on the rocks and barely acknowledged Mas, which was fine with him.

  An emcee was saying something, and then the music began. The two men sat in chairs, their shamisen in their laps, while a Japanese woman and a hakujin man dressed in a short kimono jacket called a happi coat stood in front of a microphone. Mas didn’t know that much about traditional music. Chizuko had gone through a phase of studying shigin, Japanese poetry set to music. Most people would think the combination of poetry and music would be relaxing, but shigin was anything but. When Chizuko sang, she sounded like she was about to give birth, only this baby would never come out. The shrieking and deep guttural groans continued for months, until Chizuko tired of her classes and, thankfully, joined a needlework group instead.

  The shamisen tune here was livelier, happy almost. It was definitely singsong, with the melody traveling back and forth over the same notes. Mas watched as the two men guided large, flat picks over the strings and sang of islands and old kingdoms. The woman and the man yapped into the microphone, strong bursts of energy that startled even the most drunk and tired of guests.

  Some people were standing and clapping their hands, but Mas sensed great sadness in the song. The man next to him had already gone through two more glasses of iced sake, and Mas himself gulped down one beer and asked for another. After the third one, the music was still going and Mas needed to go to the restroom. The bartender pointed toward the back of the room and Mas slipped off the bar stool to find relief.

  As he walked down a narrow corridor, he heard yelling, and not of a musical kind. It was coming from the door marked KANE, men’s room. A group of people were starting to gather at the open door, and again Mas found himself pushed to the front.

  G. I. had Randy in a headlock, pressing the top of his head against the hand-drying machine.

  “Dammit.” Randy shook G. I. off his body like a dog freeing himself of raindrops. “You don’t get it, G. I. Never did.”

  “Listen, wasn’t this party for me? You’ve won half a million dollars, man. Be happy for once.”

  Randy sneered, and for a moment Mas thought that he was going to do something violent, like throw the trash can against the mirror. But he instead tucked his head down and barreled through the crowd. The room was dead quiet. Everyone felt so self-conscious that no looks or words were exchanged. G. I. walked out, and the rest of the crowd slowly followed. Except for Mas. Filled with three Sapporos, he still had to use the bathroom. As he walked toward the stalls, he noticed a figure cowering in
the first stall, the door ajar. It was Jiro, his Hawaiian shirt ripped and the freckles on his face smeared with tears.

  Mas had had enough excitement and decided to go straight home without saying good-bye to either G. I. or Randy. The incident in the bathroom had put a damper on the festivities; the feelings of embarrassment seemed to soak throughout the banquet hall. The fake palm fronds began to look wilted up on the wooden beams, and the entertainment had changed to karaoke. An oblivious singer was swinging his hips to the words “I did it my way,” convincing Mas more than ever that it was time to leave.

  There was plain haji, or shame, that people carried with them like heavy stones. And then there was haji kaita, when you made a fool of yourself. A good number of the guests had watched G. I. and Randy make fools out of themselves. Old friends, both over fifty years old, they had no business fighting with each other like boys in a schoolyard. After Mas saw Jiro in the bathroom, the freckle-faced man, too, had scurried away in shame. Too bad, too bad, thought Mas. There was no reason for such a celebration to end on this sour note.

  Mas took out the screwdriver from his pocket even before leaving the restaurant. Ready for his clean getaway, he shoved open the back door, only to bump squarely into the young hostess, Tiffany, who was coming back into the restaurant. The screwdriver dropped and rolled down the concrete edge of the parking lot. Tiffany bent down to retrieve it. She had a fat bag around her shoulder; she must have been done for the day and realized that she had forgotten something back in the restaurant. She handed the screwdriver to Mas, scrunching her nose in curiosity.

  Mas didn’t feel like he needed to explain. It was no crime to carry a screwdriver. “Sank you,” he said quickly, and headed for his truck. Most of the Toyotas and Infinitis had left, and even though it was early, around five, there was a strange emptiness in the air. The traffic from the nearby boulevard droned like rushing water, but there were no other signs of life—no stray crows or lost seagulls on the telephone wire above. Mas jammed the screwdriver into the lock, swung open the door, and pulled himself into the Ford. It was definitely time to get out of Torrance.