Summer of the Big Bachi Read Online Free PDF Page A

outline of the Hollywood Hills and the white blocky Hollywood sign that always turned out better-looking on postcards than in real life.
     
     
Mini-malls on every other corner, old-fashioned gas stations, and looming apartment buildings. No wonder he didn’t have any customers around here— no lawns.
     
     
One place in North Hollywood Mas did know about was Keiko’s Ramen House. She advertised on the local UHF tele-vision station that broadcast Japanese programming on Sunday nights. In the commercial, Keiko looked like one of those dish-washing brushes— skinny body, with short, spiky hair that could probably clean out any filthy glass. She wore a yellow apron with a drawing of a hot steaming bowl of noodles. “Please come,” she said in a cute, high-pitched voice, bowing outside her establishment. The address then flashed below her in video letters and numbers. Mas couldn’t remember it exactly but knew that it was somewhere on Sepulveda.
     
     
After almost forty minutes of driving back and forth, Mas spotted it. Shaped like a giant shoe box, the restaurant had a small, unassuming sign. But the neon letters displayed in the window cinched it: RAMEN.
     
     
Mas parked his truck and went inside. It was three o’clock— too late for the lunch crowd, too early for dinner. Aside from a hakujin boy, sweat pouring down his shaven head as he slurped down noodles, the place was empty. A bookcase by the door was filled with fat Japanese comic books and women’s magazines. Day-old newspapers were neatly folded on the bottom shelf.
     
     
Mas immediately looked for the spiked head of Keiko but saw only a Latino man in a paper hat behind the counter.
     
     
“Hai, irasshaimase,” the cook said.
     
     
Mas narrowed his eyes and sat down at the counter. Maybe coming here was not a good idea after all. A laminated menu was in front of him, between a bottle of black soy sauce and a cylinder of red pepper. He didn’t even bother to look at the choices, and ordered a bowl of miso ramen, as basic as a ham-and-cheese sandwich.
     
     
Mas hated to eat out, especially now. He didn’t like to talk to strangers. He didn’t like to look at a long list of food items with foreign, fancy names. He didn’t like multiple pieces of silverware, two forks, two spoons. All you needed were a pair of chopsticks and a pair of hands to wrap around a hamburger or a carne asada taco.
     
     
When Mari was growing up, they went to only one restaurant: Entoro in Little Tokyo. Entoro was also known as Far East Café, a chop suey house, the old kind before the new Chinese came to town. There, you got greasy homyu, looking like day-old Cream of Wheat in a tiny bowl; almond duck, slippery, fat, and buttery, with a crunch of fried skin and nuts; and real sweet and sour pork, bright, stinking orange like the best high-grade motor oil. Everyone went to Entoro, crowded around tables separated by wooden dividers like a giant maze of horse stalls. The upstairs area was open and reserved for special occasions. Someone married, go to Far East. Someone dead, go to Far East. It was simple and predictable. Same set of waiters, who doubled as the cooks, who happened to own the joint. And the menu— who bothered to even look? Mas wasn’t even sure they had menus, but he seemed to remember a bewildered hakujin family, probably visiting from out of state, looking lost while they perused some kind of stained sheet of paper in front of them.
     
     
Far East Café closed right after the Northridge earthquake. Later, Mas heard that one of the waiters/cooks/owners had passed on. No sense in going out anymore, Mas figured. But now, against his better judgment, he was here, in Keiko’s Ramen House, in the middle of North Hollywood.
     
     
The boy with the shaven head had left, leaving only murky broth at the bottom of the bowl. Mas felt strange here alone with the mustached cook, who was tossing tangled noodles into the vat of boiling water. What was he doing here? How could he