T. Parker - Little Saigon

Bill’s eyes glimmered for a moment, the spirit of free enterprise still kicking. “First, you owe the help for last week.”

Frye counted out three hundred and fifty dollars and handed it over. Simple arithmetic suggested that his life’s savings were now right at one hundred and eighty-two dollars, plus change. Maybe Billingham will go for a freelance piece on Li’s kidnapping. Maybe the Times would pay better.

“Thanks, Chuck. Money well spent. Now like I’ve told you before, we got to do like four things before this place can throb again. First is the women’s wear. Bikinis, one-pieces, shorts, shirts, the whole deal. We still get half a dozen chicks a day — superior-looking chicks too — asking for Mega. I tell them we have no Mega for women, as such. So they head right down to Stussy or Gotcha. Gotcha? Those South Africans are killing us, right here on our native shore, and Chuck, that hurts.” Bill sucked on his straw, gaining momentum. “Second is we gotta go with kneebusters. I know they’re buttugly, but they’re big now. Supply and demand. Then I’ve got to get off my ass — I’m not blaming this whole mess on you, not even. Fourth, bro, is you gotta get back in the contests and dust off your name. The buying public is a fickle animal, and if you’re not out there in the water, at the parties and surf films, they just forget about Mega. You gotta get visible, man. Frye, the last thing you did public was when you dressed like the ape at your party and chased the chick through the bushes and got your picture in the paper. Great photo. Great stunt, but you gotta follow up. You gotta be apparent. Hell, Chuck, you gotta surf.”

Frye nodded, considering this four-point plan. Bill was contagious in his own way.

“You forget how to surf or something, Chuck?”

“No.”

“Good. Getting fired from the paper was the best thing that could’ve happened for Mega. Now you can win contests again and put us back on top. In fact, I just entered you in the Huntington Masters Invitational next month. Great exposure. All the Aussies and Hawaiians will be there and you can blow them out of the water. Totally.”

Frye wondered if drowning in a contest would boost sales.

“And one more thing, Chuck. Your hair. I mean, it’s like way too long. Kids now got it kinda fifties-like, you know, Tab Hunter or something. Modernize, Chuck.”

“I like my hair okay.”

“You’re a chop.”

“And I don’t know the first thing about bikinis.”

Antioch choked down more shake. “You don’t have to! We just get a designer. You didn’t know anything about sandals either, did you? But look how they sold! Two years ago everybody on earth had those things on. Who else can say they sent the president a free pair of MegaSandals to wear at the White House Beach Boys Concert?” Bill’s countenance fell; he grew pensive. “You know, we made ’em too good. I still get people in here wearing MegaSandals from years back. They don’t ever wear out. Bikinis, Chuck. The future is a string bikini. MegaKini. There you are. It’s all out there for the taking.”

Frye tried to reconcile the kidnapping of Li, the death of his marriage, and his fear of the water with a future of string bikinis. He thought, something has to give. Haven’t I known that for too long? He looked at Dunce, asleep now in a rhombus of sunlight inside the door. He watched the cars on Coast Highway, droning past the bleak windows. Back in the old days, this was quite the place. Parties. Linda. Profit. A little attention was all she needed. Like everything else, there comes a point when you put up or get out. How come it took me so long to realize that if you do nothing, things fall apart? “Okay, Bill. Let’s get this place going again. Find a designer for women’s wear and I’ll get back on the surf circuit. We’ll make it work.”

Bill finished his shake with a last desperate slurp, then swung out his hand, smiling. “We can get back on top, Chuck, I swear. We’ll kick everybody’s ass, like totally. You miss the contests anyway, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Linda?”

“She split.”

“What a drag. There was a girl in here looking for you yesterday. Real nectar. Cristobel Something or Other. Matter of fact, she had a dog with her, just like that one.”

Frye regarded the brute, body bent and one leg up now in the patch of sun, chasing a flea around his balls with a fervent snorting and clicking of teeth.

She came here looking for me, he thought. This could be the start of something long and beautiful. Erotic in unprecedented ways. Eventually a family of adoring children, all with genius IQs. I will teach my son to surf. Maybe she changed her mind about my offer. On the other hand, maybe she just came by to tell me I’m an asshole. “She leave a message?”

“Here’s her number.”

“Okay, Bill. Clean up this dust, will ya? Mega is on the comeback trail.”

Antioch eyed Frye’s stitches. “Radical face. What happened?”

“Shaving accident.”

“What with, dude, a chainsaw? Hey Frye, you mind if I close the shop for an hour today? I wanna go see that MIA rally. Every time I look at Lucia Parsons, my prick gets hard as a surfboard.”

“Do what you feel is best, Bill.”

Frye called Cristobel Something or Other’s number. Her voice was kind of low and she sounded tired. He explained that he had found her dog. She gave him her address — on Coast Highway, just two blocks from the MegaShop — and asked him to bring him back.

Outside, he found an empty bench and opened the Register to the Orange County section. Eddie Vo’s face stared back at him, sullen, dark and inward, GANG LEADER SOUGHT IN KIDNAPPING. The piece said that “articles belonging to the kidnapped woman were found in Vo’s rented Westminster home.” Vo was “at large,” and the cops were looking all over the county.

Li smiled in the photo beside him, serene, goddesslike.

Below the fold was a shot of Ground Zero Records, little more than a black cavern now, gutted by fire. The caption posited that a rival gang may have set the blaze.

The rival gang that took Bennett’s tape.

And broke into my house, wrecked my stuff, strung my room with Christmas lights and generally shit in my mess kit. While I was out helping Eddie Vo get away.

Cristobel’s place was a washed-out, once-blue, and now rickety apartment just past Fahrenheit 451 Books. The dog, sensing home turf, led Frye down a walkway. The buildings seemed to slouch in lazy angles, a patternless surrender to time and gravity.

He stood on a big patio, surrounded on three sides by railing. Dunce nosed the door to Number Seven. Through the Dutch door, Frye could see her sitting with her back to him, shoulders forward, head down a little, right elbow held outward.

For a moment he watched as she worked a big pair of scissors through some material, her left hand spreading it flat. Through the picture window she worked behind, Frye noted the blue glitter of the Pacific and the sun high in a flawless sky. Her reflection rode across the water, mingled with the sun — a truly special effect, Frye concluded. He moved closer.

Dunce barked and jumped at the door, and Frye watched Cristobel turn. He was getting a smile ready when a dark shape suddenly blotted her out and he found himself looking at a large black man who wiped out the ocean and sun: no shirt, muscles bunching and sweat glistening off his chest, his hair planed flat in the manner of Carl Lewis, a not very friendly look on his face. The man moved from the window and the door swung open. Dunce slipped inside with a series of whimpers that told of abduction, torture, escape. The black man offered his hand. “Jim Strauss,” he said.