Free Summer of the Big Bachi by Naomi Hirahara

position, he could still see the stack of old magazines by the bed. He knew that it was the third one down, under the February Triple A magazine and the Japanese go book. He knew practically every page by heart— the brunette in the royal blue panties, the blond with the swollen basketball chichi . Hell, he could even recall the design of every liquor ad in between the different centerfolds, and then felt an uneasiness in his jeans. He lowered his hand toward the magazines and then stopped. He licked his lips.
     
     
It’s no good, he muttered. Damn you, old woman, where are you? His heart ached for those sagging, empty breasts and stomach lined with scars from surgery after surgery. He should have done it to her during her last days. Ignored the smell of sickness, and held her.
     
     
He heard a crash outside— was it the local alley cat overturning the trash cans again? Mas stood up quickly, spilling his beer onto the green carpet.
     
     
Once he reached the back door, there was only a strange and eerie silence. Mas felt the presence of at least another human being. “Hal-lo,” Mas called out, but no one replied. He then went to the front to check.
     
     
Mas opened the screen door Tug had fixed. There was that smell again. Menthol. Salon Pas. The same as in the mistress’s apartment. His neighbors, mostly black and Mexicans, didn’t carry this smell. It could be only one person. Mas was sure of it. This visit was a practice for something bigger, like when Mas went to the stables to check out the horses for the next race. You looked for the ones with energy, kick, and bet against the ones who had no fight.
     
     
Mas stepped out on the cement porch. The neighborhood was quiet for once. No police helicopters flying overhead, and the teenagers seemed to be away, probably causing havoc in a place with more life. The moon was almost full, and Mas caught a rectangular shape amid the glass and other trash in the old rock garden below. Mas knelt down and fished out the new addition to his garden. It was the black-and-white photograph of the three boys on the bridge. Nakane must have dropped it when the broken screen door had fallen down on him.
     
     
“Whyzu you followin’ me?” Mas muttered out loud. He felt like destroying that photograph, but thought better of it. He had seen Joji Haneda burn once before. Mas couldn’t do it to his friend a second time.
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER FIVE

     
     
Mas didn’t like people changing their minds. Chizuko did it at times, first saying that she wanted to see the Grand Canyon, then requesting Yellowstone. Turned out they spent most vacations either on the dunes of Pismo Beach or at the Dunes of Las Vegas, where Mas stayed glued to the poker tables of the Four Queens. Closest thing Chizuko ever got to the Canyon was watching a large-screen presentation at Disneyland one year. “See, just like you go,” Mas said as Chizuko clutched her handbag tight at her elbow in front of the giant screen.
     
     
So when Mas told Haruo that he would accompany him to the medical exams, Haruo almost fell off the kitchen chair. Now they stood on the sixth floor of a new building, tall and silver like a streamlined rocket.
     
     
“Mas, I betcha glad you changed your mind,” said Haruo, his face looking especially oily, so that the fluorescent lights bounced colors of green and blue off his scar.
     
     
“I just needed to get outta the house. Neva said that I’d see a docta.”
     
     
The doors of the medical office were still closed. The rug, a gray rat color, smelled new and factory-made. The hallways were lined with a bunch of urusai folks like Haruo. Mas recognized a few of them; a pretty woman with all-white hair belonged to the same Japanese school group as Chizuko. A dark man, formerly from Terminal Island, who always seemed to reel in the biggest fishes at the Mammoth Lake derbies. They nodded to one another, not remembering names but knowing that at one time they had worked or played side