Naomi Hirahara - Gasa-Gasa Girl

The bald man looked sincerely disappointed. “That’s too bad,” he said. “But if you’re around, please come.”

As Mas left the gated garden, he just had to shake his head. He had had contact with plenty of strange hakujin in California, but the ones in Park Slope might even top them. He almost stopped by a wire garbage can to toss the flyer, but had second thoughts and stuffed it in his jeans pocket instead.

Mas should have been warned about the size of the Atlantic Avenue station by the long line of letters and numbers encased in circles and diamonds on the sign in front of the station’s stairs. There was an M, N, two Qs, R, W, 2, 5, and 4, their desired train line, in a green circle. As Mas descended the steps, he hung on to the metal railing, his left shoulder and elbow banging into passersby, plastic bags, and briefcases. The railing was cold and sticky, yet the last thing he wanted was to tumble down, break his neck, and be squashed by commuters.

When he got to the bottom of the cement stairs, Mas was hit with the sour and acidic smell of shikko and attempted to breathe out of his mouth. It was the same in every big city: secret corners always attracted secret behavior. He stumbled toward the open lobby, where men and women swiped cards alongside long machines and rushed in and out of turnstiles. How was Mas going to find Tug in the chaos?

Then Mas remembered the mention of the ticket booth. Sure enough, against the wall was a box the size of two phone booths. Inside was a black man dressed in a blue uniform. Mas shuddered to think about being trapped under the street in such a small space.

“Mas, old man.” A familiar voice called out to him. Tug walked through a revolving door made of metal posts like those found at the exit of Disneyland. “Thank God I found you. You’re kind of easy to miss.”

Tug, on the other hand, was not. His hair, which had a wave to it, was frizzier than usual. His white beard glowed underneath the fluorescent lights. Upon seeing his friend, Mas felt the knot in his stomach loosen. Tug was a few years older than Mas, but his mind was still sharp. Sometimes he forgot trivial details-the name of an old high school classmate, for example-but as an ex-government worker, Tug fully understood how to work the system. When their daughters were still young, the two families occasionally vacationed together. Those were the only times the Arais stayed at hotels fancier than Motel 6 or Travelodge. From Tug, Mas learned about AAA and the automobile club’s hotel rating system. Tug and Lil never laid their heads on a bed in a room ranked less than two diamonds, while Mas and Chizuko couldn’t even find their regular discount spots in the AAA book at all.

Tug was not a New York man, but he could navigate the city a hell of a lot better than Mas. “We’ve got to get you a MetroCard.” Tug headed for the ticket booth, pulling out his wallet from his front pocket. “This will last you the whole week.”

Before Mas could protest, Tug was at the window, placing a twenty-dollar bill through a hole in what looked like bulletproof glass. Why was everyone trying to make Mas commit to staying in the city longer?

Tug gave Mas a plastic ticket and gestured toward the fast-moving line of people going through turnstiles. “You place the ticket here,” said Tug, swiping the ticket in an opening like those for credit cards at grocery stores. He pushed his way forward through a turnstile. “You go now, Mas.”

Someone pushed Mas from behind, cursed, and then quickly moved to the next line. Mas felt his head grow hot as he carefully nudged the ticket through the slot and then awkwardly stepped forward, the metal post of the turnstile pressing against his lower ribs.

“You can use this card on all the other lines, Mas. You’ll find it quite handy.” Tug pushed Mas toward another section of the terminal, and Mas found himself descending stairs again.

Mas had seen images of modern subway stations on Japanese soap operas broadcast on Sunday nights in L.A., but he had never stepped foot in one. The trains back in Hiroshima, before the Bomb, were powered the old-fashioned way: with coal. L.A. had its own so-called train system, but no gardener would have any use for that. As for Mas, he had his beloved 1956 Ford truck, which was a lot lighter these days after having been ravaged by a thief and a looter. But it still managed to get the job done, which was more than he could say for some modern-day vans and pickup trucks.

The train platform was plain concrete, stained by layers of spilled food. Down below, on the tracks, were remnants of people’s lives. Dividing the “Manhattan-bound” passengers from the “Brooklyn-bound” were a few benches and advertisements about preventing disease. More people seemed to be on Tug and Mas’s side, and Mas figured out that the ride to the Seventy-seventh Precinct would not be a pleasant one. The train car going in the opposite direction came and went, and then finally one on their side rumbled through the connecting tunnel and screeched to a stop in front of the platform. The car was a magnet for the waiting passengers, who all moved to the edge of a yellow-painted line toward one of the series of doors. Tug guided him, and as the doors whooshed open, Mas felt the uncomfortable closeness of people on all sides of him. Travelers spilled out of the train car as if they had been released from a dam. Mas and Tug’s crowd, on the other hand, pushed forward, moving against the tide.

Once inside, Mas noticed that all the seats facing the center were occupied. Tug reached up for a metal bar parallel to the length of the car’s ceiling, while Mas had to grasp on to the only stationary thing that he could reach-a vertical pole like those in fire stations. The doors slid shut, the train jerked forward, and Mas felt his body sway back and forth like a dead perch on a fishing line.

As the doors opened and closed at the next station, the crowd changed slightly with the subtraction of some passengers and the addition of others. A teenager in a basketball jersey, with a boom box blasting rhythms, came and went, replaced by another young man in a black hat, short, scraggly beard, and a set of two long ringlets-Mari used to wear her hair in similar curlicues when she was young. A group of black women, all friends, stood in one corner, their voices dipping up and down in a cadence that Mas was unfamiliar with. Many of the passengers, from the boy in the knit cap to the old lady in loose panty hose, sat reading books. Chizuko would have been impressed with this, thought Mas, who was a little impressed himself.

At the next stop, a muffled voice came on over the intercom. Mas couldn’t make out any of it, but Tug nudged Mas and they were released into a station with a sign that read Crown Heights – Utica Avenue. They made their way from the belly of the station to street level. As Mas was met by the cutting coldness, he almost missed the pressing fever from the people of the train.

They walked north along a busy boulevard crowded with music shops, grocery stores, and restaurants smelling of burnt pineapple and other tropical fruits. At each intersection, Tug and Mas waited for the Walk sign while all the other pedestrians charged ahead. Even Tug got tired of them being the odd men out, and after looking both ways, they ran across the street against the red light with the rest of the crowd.

Finally they came to a two-story rectangular building that reminded Mas of the tight and simple structures in L.A. ’s Toy District, near Little Tokyo. It was made of bricks the hue of the yellow tiles in Mas’s bathroom back home. And like the bathroom, black dirt had accumulated in corners, proof of pollution, hard times, and neglect.

“C’mon, Mas,” said Tug. “That’s the police station.”