Snakeskin Shamisen by Naomi Hirahara

for breakfast in Gardena, not too far from the
shamisen
player’s home. That’s where he has his music studio.”
    “He knowsu weezu comin’?”
    Juanita had put on a pair of sunglasses, and it was hard to see any life in her face. “Sometimes it’s better to catch them off guard.”
    Mas didn’t like surprises, and he figured that the
shamisen
player was not so different.
    “So whatsu youzu gonna say?”
    “Well, I may not be saying anything, Mr. Arai. I’m not sure that he can speak English.”
    Mas stayed quiet. He hoped that Juanita wasn’t saying what he thought she was saying. He wanted to just go along for the ride, like a dog in the passenger seat of any other pickup truck. Dogs liked the window open so that the wind could hit their faces. They had no intention, however, of taking control of the entire car.
    “Whyzu those people at G. I.’s party in first place?”
    “I think that the restaurant contacted the Okinawa group. All of the halaus—you know, the Hawaiian dance troupes—were booked. I’m not sure why they went Okinawan.”
    Mas tried not to stretch his mind to connect the dots too early. His experience was once you thought you figured something out, you inevitably ended up surprised in the end. He instead looked out the window. To the west of the freeway were clumps of palm trees in between rows of square homes that held precariously to their bits of dirt. Satellite dishes sat aimed at their targets in the sky while clothes dried on the lines. Life as usual in L.A.
    They passed the huge monster Hustler gambling casino. Mas remembered when there had been only a small circle of card clubs in the area. Now that circle had exploded, and giant gambling dens as big as warehouses were clustered by the freeway.
    Juanita finally parked the truck in a business district that seemed to be hanging on to the new and the old with each hand. An Italian deli with its crowd of suited men and women standing outside—early business meetings, perhaps? Across the street, customers waited their turn inside a Mexican pan dulce bakery to select pink and brown pastries with pairs of tongs and place them on pastel plastic trays.
    Mas and Juanita walked two doors down from the Mexican sweet bread house to a meeting place, another Hawaiian restaurant, called Bruddah’s, but this one looked nothing like the place where G. I.’s party had been. Instead of a resurrected chain pancake house, it was in a narrow ramshackle storefront, the kind of place where bleary-eyed fishermen would feel at home. Simple booths on the sides and then a row of tables and chairs in the middle. The photocopied menu was folded next to the
shoyu
(not just any kind of soy sauce, but the Aloha brand, made in Honolulu), ketchup, and Tabasco. There were some old men, probably part-time gardeners like Mas, sitting scattered in a few of the booths. In the corner was a young couple with tattoos all along their arms and legs, and sitting at a middle table, a black woman who looked to be in her sixties.
    The black woman rose as Juanita approached. “Ms. Gushiken,” she stated more than asked.
    “Yes.” Juanita stuck out her hand, which the woman gripped firmly. “It’s so nice to meet you, Professor. This is my translator, Mas Arai.”
    The woman took hold of Mas’s hand, and Mas was embarrassed that she could probably feel every callus knotted on the palm of it. She was a smart woman; she would realize in an instant that he was no translator, but a plain workingman who had little to do with words. She took out two business cards and presented them in turn to Juanita and Mas with both hands, Japanese style. “Genessee Howard. Please call me Genessee.”
    Mas nodded, telling himself that he wouldn’t be calling the professor any name, especially one he couldn’t pronounce, if he could help it. Professor Howard was a small woman with a face round and squat like the shape of a garbanzo bean. She had a short, neat Afro and wore gold-framed