charged abruptly around a bend in the creek, and they both glanced over as it yapped angrily at them. The dog had a collar and a leash dragging behind as it made another mock charge.
“I already called animal control. He won’t let you close enough to catch the leash. I’m not really complaining about the race stuff, by the way. Nobody ever beat me up for being Japanese.”
“You’re too damn big to beat up, man.”
He started packing up his equipment. Canvas flaps folded up snugly over the plastic tray of vials and snapped into place, and the whole structure went into a backpack.
“Was this once really a creek?” Jack Liffey asked.
“You know, you take a big floodplain like this and the rivers and tributaries change their course all the time. Until we decide to stop it. It’s frozen the way it was when the army Corps of Engineers decided to channelize everything in sight. Sort of like that Fukuyama thing, The End of History. ”
“I kind of like history,” Jack Liffey said.
The dog made another false charge, but this time changed its mind and turned up the cement toward a group of kids who were tagging a warehouse wall just outside the channel fence. The kids ignored the dog. They weren’t doing anything fancy, just the zigzag letters of their tagger names. Zuko, one clearly said.
“I wonder if you feel any more immortal after doing that,” Tony Watanabe mused.
“All kids feel immortal. There’s a bit of sidewalk in San Pedro that’s got ‘J. L.’ incised into the cement, immortal until the ficus tree roots bust it all up.”
The taggers ran off laughing, banging their own legs with their cumbersome cans of paint.
“You ever go back and look at it?”
“I was back there just two days ago, and I forgot to look up my initials. Ironic, isn’t it? I just up and forgot about my immortality.” He laughed. “The lizard brain wins.”
That was something else they’d nattered about a lot at TBW, somebody’s theory that what the Buddhists had done was fixate on an ancient part of the human brain that didn’t know past or future, only the now.
“You didn’t hunt me down to talk about the lizard brain.”
“No. There’s a guy down in San Pedro who’s committing a series of crimes. Spiteful, really, but nobody’s been physically hurt yet. You know about Hello Kitty?”
“I haven’t been on Mars for the past few years.”
“Okay, it’s like that. He leaves Happy Kitty playing cards at his crime scenes with a—whatchamacallit, a hanko —stamped on each one.” He took out the Xerox and showed him.
“I can’t read kanji, Jack. You have to master five thousand of these to be considered literate. There’re also two phonetic alphabets the poor Japanese kids have to learn, plus our Roman alphabet.”
“Jesus, I had no idea.”
“They say it takes seven years of pure memorizing to master written Japanese. It’s no wonder the schools have the reputation of being stuck on rote learning.”
“I guess so. That stamp says ‘no no.’ I already know that, but it doesn’t help me much. I thought it might mean something to you.”
Tony Watanabe took the Xerox from him. “Uh-uh, but Masako is a lot more into the culture, and I could ask this Mr. Japan teacher the kids have. You want me to try?”
“I’d be delighted.”
He’d found a note from Maeve at his condo that she was going to spend a couple of days at her mom’s, which was mildly suspicious because she rarely went back there willingly before she was due. But he let it rest and called Rebecca’s voice mail at school to say he’d be at her place tonight and he’d make dinner. They tried to take turns on houses, but more often they ended up together for stretches at one place or the other, and when Maeve wasn’t around, it was often Rebecca’s place.
He bundled Loco into the car and shopped at a fancy market in Larchmont to get the fixings for a sun-dried tomato pasta, only wincing a little when he noticed at checkout
“I already called animal control. He won’t let you close enough to catch the leash. I’m not really complaining about the race stuff, by the way. Nobody ever beat me up for being Japanese.”
“You’re too damn big to beat up, man.”
He started packing up his equipment. Canvas flaps folded up snugly over the plastic tray of vials and snapped into place, and the whole structure went into a backpack.
“Was this once really a creek?” Jack Liffey asked.
“You know, you take a big floodplain like this and the rivers and tributaries change their course all the time. Until we decide to stop it. It’s frozen the way it was when the army Corps of Engineers decided to channelize everything in sight. Sort of like that Fukuyama thing, The End of History. ”
“I kind of like history,” Jack Liffey said.
The dog made another false charge, but this time changed its mind and turned up the cement toward a group of kids who were tagging a warehouse wall just outside the channel fence. The kids ignored the dog. They weren’t doing anything fancy, just the zigzag letters of their tagger names. Zuko, one clearly said.
“I wonder if you feel any more immortal after doing that,” Tony Watanabe mused.
“All kids feel immortal. There’s a bit of sidewalk in San Pedro that’s got ‘J. L.’ incised into the cement, immortal until the ficus tree roots bust it all up.”
The taggers ran off laughing, banging their own legs with their cumbersome cans of paint.
“You ever go back and look at it?”
“I was back there just two days ago, and I forgot to look up my initials. Ironic, isn’t it? I just up and forgot about my immortality.” He laughed. “The lizard brain wins.”
That was something else they’d nattered about a lot at TBW, somebody’s theory that what the Buddhists had done was fixate on an ancient part of the human brain that didn’t know past or future, only the now.
“You didn’t hunt me down to talk about the lizard brain.”
“No. There’s a guy down in San Pedro who’s committing a series of crimes. Spiteful, really, but nobody’s been physically hurt yet. You know about Hello Kitty?”
“I haven’t been on Mars for the past few years.”
“Okay, it’s like that. He leaves Happy Kitty playing cards at his crime scenes with a—whatchamacallit, a hanko —stamped on each one.” He took out the Xerox and showed him.
“I can’t read kanji, Jack. You have to master five thousand of these to be considered literate. There’re also two phonetic alphabets the poor Japanese kids have to learn, plus our Roman alphabet.”
“Jesus, I had no idea.”
“They say it takes seven years of pure memorizing to master written Japanese. It’s no wonder the schools have the reputation of being stuck on rote learning.”
“I guess so. That stamp says ‘no no.’ I already know that, but it doesn’t help me much. I thought it might mean something to you.”
Tony Watanabe took the Xerox from him. “Uh-uh, but Masako is a lot more into the culture, and I could ask this Mr. Japan teacher the kids have. You want me to try?”
“I’d be delighted.”
He’d found a note from Maeve at his condo that she was going to spend a couple of days at her mom’s, which was mildly suspicious because she rarely went back there willingly before she was due. But he let it rest and called Rebecca’s voice mail at school to say he’d be at her place tonight and he’d make dinner. They tried to take turns on houses, but more often they ended up together for stretches at one place or the other, and when Maeve wasn’t around, it was often Rebecca’s place.
He bundled Loco into the car and shopped at a fancy market in Larchmont to get the fixings for a sun-dried tomato pasta, only wincing a little when he noticed at checkout
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