Summer of the Big Bachi Read Online Free PDF

expect to find someone he hadn’t seen for thirty years?
     
     
It was that meishi, with its sharp, clean edges, fancy printing, and Hiroshima connection, that nagged at Mas. Why was this straight-from-Japan fellow looking for Joji Haneda? It meant trouble, a kind of trouble that Mas knew would touch him, too. His only hope was that the man everyone here knew as Haneda kept running, and stayed the hell away from L.A.
     
     
The miso ramen, looking as limp as the sweaty chef, was surprisingly tasty. It certainly beat those instant ones that Haruo insisted on buying at his local grocery store.
     
     
As soon as he slurped up the last bit of soup, he smelled something sweet behind him. It was Keiko, the Ramen Lady on the television commercial. The points on her spiked hair glowed bright yellow.
     
     
“How was it?” she asked. Her voice was low and husky like a middle-aged barmaid. It didn’t match the high-pitched one on the television commercial, and for a moment Mas was too stunned to know what to say.
     
     
Keiko then switched over to Japanese. “How did you find it?” she repeated.
     
     
“ Oishii. Very good,” Mas answered.
     
     
“First time?”
     
     
Mas nodded.
     
     
“How did you hear about us? Terebi? ”
     
     
Mas nodded again. “Saw your commercial.”
     
     
Keiko smiled, obviously pleased with her public presence. “My voice too low, too sexy, they told me. Used a twenty-year-old who was working at the station on her summer break. Nice to be young, ne .”
     
     
Mas didn’t dare to say anything more. He wasn’t used to snooping around, especially out here in the San Fernando Valley. This wasn’t his part of town, and it knew it. Mas was waiting to be tossed out, rejected like those broken branches he tended at one of his longtime customers’. They called it grafting, an attempt to attach something strange and new to an established tree. It usually didn’t work, either with plants or with people.
     
     
“You don’t live around here,” Keiko said before Mas could get away.
     
     
Mas shook his head and took out his wallet.
     
     
“What, you have some friends out here?”
     
     
Mas was thankful that his face was already sweaty and red from the hot noodles. She wasn’t going to give up, so Mas gave her what she wanted. “Yah, friend.”
     
     
“Oh, really? Well, tell him to come try.”
     
     
Mas grunted.
     
     
“Maybe I know him. What’s his name?”
     
     
Mas stared into Keiko’s eyes. What the heck? he thought. What did he have to lose? “Haneda,” he said finally. “Joji Haneda.”
     
     
“Haneda- san ? Junko- san ’s friend? They were coming here almost every day last week. Told Junko she should try cooking herself once in a while.”
     
     
Mas’s chest lurched. So it was fate after all that he was in this sweaty ramen house in the middle of North Hollywood. He had come this far. No sense in backing off. “Yah, Junko,” he said. “You don’t know where she lives, do you?”
     
     
Keiko’s eyes flashed for one second. “Just a minute,” she said, disappearing into the back kitchen.
     
     
Now I’ve done it, thought Mas. I’m not cut out to do this kind of sneaking around. He picked up the check and placed a crumpled five-dollar bill and a couple of ones on the plastic plate. She’s probably on the phone now, warning this Junko about a dirty old ojiichan at the ramen house.
     
     
He pulled open the door, and almost walked smack into another Japanese woman, who was maybe around Mari’s age. Her eyes sloped downward like two tadpoles; her left one curved more than the right. At the bottom of the left one was a black birthmark, looking like one of those tattooed teardrops on some of the boys Mas picked up as day laborers. Only this mark was natural, not branded.
     
     
“Excuse,” mumbled Mas.
     
     
The woman flared her nostrils in irritation. She was one of those who hated old men, Mas figured.
     
     
“Wait,” Keiko called out. “She let me borrow this. Her address is here.” She